c. 1999 Religion News Service
Protestants, Catholics voice concerns, prayers after air strikes
(RNS) Evangelical Christians are offering different views on the NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia, with one Southern Baptist leader saying they should have happened long ago and another Baptist ethicist saying they are not morally justified.”The president of Serbia is a war criminal, by any recognized international standards,”said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Commission.”He has committed multitudinous crimes against humanity.” Land, who was quoted in Baptist Press, the Southern Baptist Convention’s news service, said he had been calling for NATO to stop President Slobodan Milosevic for years.”If President Clinton and NATO had acted earlier, they would have saved thousand of lives and terrible suffering for countless more thousands,”he said.
But Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics in Nashville, Tenn., had another view.”The barbarous actions of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic do not morally justify U.S. air strikes against Yugoslavia,”said Parham, quoted in Associated Baptist Press, an independent news service.”High-tech bombing without political resolution that leads to peace and security for all only deepens animosities and promises more conflict,”said Parham, who is also a Religion News Service columnist
Other evangelical ministries offered their prayers for the innocent people affected by the bombing.”We call upon our people everywhere to pray fervently,”said Denton Lotz, general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, in a pastoral letter to Baptists in the Balkans.”Pray for wisdom that leaders will repent and put down their swords. Pray that the Church of Jesus Christ will witness prophetically to the call of Christ that we become peacemakers.” Likewise, the Rev. Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, sent a pastoral letter to churches in Yugoslavia, expressing solidarity and prayerful support.”The attack signals a failure to reach a negotiated agreement, and a breakdown in human relations,”wrote Raiser, whose organization has Orthodox as well as Protestant and Anglican churches as members.”War can only bring further destruction and human suffering to a region which has already experienced so much pain, and will open new wounds and enmities.” Catholic organizations, too, urged that more peaceful efforts be considered.”Pax Christi USA appeals to NATO to halt this bombing campaign out of concern for the suffering and death which will surely be the result of air strikes,”the national Catholic peace movement said in a statement.”Using a massive bombing campaign to deter or coerce a leader by attacking his nation is abhorrent to us and takes on the appearance of the blind, irrational rage that can only foment more violence,”wrote officials of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in a joint statement.
The leaders of the religious orders added that the U.S. government should have a broader approach to dealing with crimes against humanity that have occurred in Yugoslavia and beyond.”Innocent victims in a geographic zone covered by NATO are no more nor less worthy of the world’s attention and protection than genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda and Mayan Indians in Guatemala,”they wrote.”A patchwork approach to the world conflicts over ethnic, religious, racial, cultural groupings will fail in the long run.”
Kevorkian found guilty for first time
(RNS) Dr. Jack Kevorkian was convicted Friday (March 26) of second-degree murder and delivery of a controlled substance for giving a lethal injection to an ailing man whose death was shown on “60 Minutes.”
The decision marked the first time in five trials that Kevorkian was found guilty.
The jury, which deliberated for a day and a half, cleared him of first-degree murder, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.
Kevorkian, 70, could still get a life term for the death of 52-year-old Thomas Youk, who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease. His sentencing is scheduled for April 14.
As the verdict was read, Kevorkian showed no reaction, the Associated Press reported.
Kevorkian had dared prosecutors to charge him, and he had threatened to go on a hunger strike if convicted and jailed.
Kevorkian served as his own lawyer during the short trial and stumbled over legal procedure repeatedly.
It was the first murder trial for Kevorkian, who says he has assisted at 130 suicides since 1990. All of his previous trials were on assisted suicide charges. They resulted in three acquittals and one mistrial.
In past cases, Kevorkian has said his clients used his homemade devices to start the flow of intravenous chemicals or carbon monoxide that caused their death. In Youk’s case, Kevorkian administered the injection.
Comparing Kevorkian to”a medical hitman in the night,”prosecutor John Skrzynski asked jurors not to let Kevorkian make a political statement with Youk’s death.
Kevorkian argued that he was no more culpable than an executioner because he was merely doing his duty as a physician to relieve Youk’s suffering. He compared himself to civil rights heroes Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks and invited the jury to disregard the law.
“Words on paper do not necessarily create crimes,” he said. “There are certain acts that by sheer common sense are not crimes. This may be one of them. That’s for you to decide.”
Judge Jessica Cooper rejected the prosecution’s request for an explicit warning to jurors against “jury nullification” _ setting aside the law out of sympathy for the defendant. She told the jurors instead that mercy killing is not an excuse for murder.
Youk was diagnosed two years ago with Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressively fatal illness that eventually leaves victims unable to swallow, move or speak.
Kevorkian injected Youk with a fatal mix of drugs on Sept. 17 at Youk’s home. The death was videotaped, and Kevorkian gave the tape to CBS’ “60 Minutes.” The show’s broadcast of parts of the tape and an interview with Kevorkian were seen in 15.6 million homes.
RU-486 could be available by year’s end, company says
(RNS) The American company licensed to market RU-486 says the controversial abortion pill could be available by the end of this year.
The Danco Group, a start-up pharmaceutical company in New York, has begun discussing with doctors how to prescribe and administer the drug, The Washington Post reported.”We expect to have the drug available by the end of the year,”said Heather O’Neill, the company’s spokeswoman.
The Feminist Majority Foundation has supported bringing RU-486 to this country for more than 10 years.”It appears that everything is finally in order,”said Eleanor Smeal, president of the foundation.
But a Southern Baptist member of Congress still plans to work against FDA approval of the drug.
John Hart, press secretary for Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said the congressman”will fight it,”reported Baptist Press, the Southern Baptist Convention’s news service.
A Southern Baptist specialist on bioethics said the news of the Danco Group’s confidence about the drug’s availability is”one small inch for the abortion industry and one giant step in the culture of death.””The news of the expected approval of RU-486 is bad enough, but what it portends for our culture is even worse,”said Ben Mitchell, ethics professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.”The abortion pill will just make it easier for our culture to salve its conscience, because abortion will be done in the privacy of one’s home instead of in the clinic on the corner.” Strong opposition from anti-abortion groups has helped keep RU-486 out of the U.S. market. But some women are already using the pill in a special research program through more than a dozen sites across the country, the Post reported.
More than 3,000 U.S. women have taken RU-486 in the past 18 months under this program, which is sponsored by an advocacy group called Abortion Rights Mobilization.
The RU-486 pill, or mifepristone, was developed by Roussel-Uclaf, a French firm, in the late 1980s. It is commonly used in France, Sweden, England and China.
Tibetan Buddhist leaders reaffirm backing for Dalai Lama
(RNS) Nearly 200 leading Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns have pledged to reject violence and to continue to follow the Dalai Lama’s peaceful approach toward restoring greater independence for Tibet.
The pledge came at a three-day meeting that ended Wednesday (March 24) in New Delhi. It marked the first time that the leading monks, nuns and administrators of Tibetan Buddhist monastic communities in India, the United States, Europe, Southeast Asia and elsewhere had come together.
A resolution adopted at the three-day meeting said”all delegates and participants at the conference have agreed to follow exactly all and any advice given by His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet.” Actor Richard Gere, a staunch pro-Tibet activist, told the Associated Press at the meeting that”the Dalai Lama is a very wise man. The middle path he is advocating in dealing with China is the correct path.” The meeting followed recent calls for greater militancy by some pro-Tibet activists frustrated with the Dalai Lama’s inability so far to gain concessions from China on Tibetan autonomy.
The Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 following a failed revolt against Chinese military occupation of once-independent Tibet. From his base in India, he travels the world seeking to gain political support for greater freedom for Tibet.
Vatican again says women cannot become deacons
(RNS) The Vatican official who oversees Catholic clergy has reiterated the church’s stand against woman being ordained deacons, saying the role is too close to that of priests.
Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos of Colombia, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy, made the statement Thursday (March 25) at a news conference called to issue the text of Pope John Paul II’s annual letter to priests for Holy Thursday.
The pope has repeatedly ruled out priesthood for women, but there is increasingly vocal support within the Roman Catholic Church for ordaining woman as deacons.
Supporters of a female deaconate argue that this would not clash with the papal ban on woman priests because deacons are restricted to carrying out liturgical functions and do not celebrate the Eucharist.
While ordination as a deacon may be the first step toward priesthood, the church also has a growing order of”permanent deacons,”some of them married, who do not seek to become priests. Castrillon Hoyos said, however, that women cannot become deacons because this”could represent a step toward the priesthood. “This The pope’s Holy Thursday letter will be distributed to Catholic priests throughout the world who renew their vows of obedience and celibacy at the Chrism Mass on the morning of Holy Thursday, which this year falls on April 1. According to the Vatican’s most recent statistics, as of December 1997 there were 4,420 bishops, 404,208 priests and 24,407 permanent deacons worldwide. In his letter, devoted this year to closer communion with God, the pope urged”all priests to carry out with confidence and courage their duty of guiding the community to authentic Christian prayer.””This is a duty which no priest may ever forsake,”he said,”even though the difficulties caused by today’s secularized mentality can at times make it extremely demanding for him.” Vatican official criticizes poor nations that buy weapons (RNS) A Vatican bishop said the Jubilee 2000 emphasis on debt reduction for poor countries does not mean those same nations should be viewed as helpless innocents _ especially when they build up their military.”Some of those (poor) countries have begun to increase their military expenditures. We must also say no to that,”said Bishop Diarmuid Martin, secretary of the Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace. In a March 20 speech at the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s Justice and Peace Conference, Martin noted that Ethiopia, which is poor and laden with international debt, recently purchased 50 old Soviet MiG fighter jets. Ethiopia and its African neighboring Eritrea have been locked in recent conflict. Martin said the Vatican’s Jubilee 2000 celebrations include advocating more compassionate economies”to restore rightful equality to human relationships.”That meant, he explained, that people should not be forced to accept that which is thrust upon them by corporations. He was particularly critical of what he views as half-hearted efforts by richer nations to aid those poorer nations burdened by international debt.”Most debt reliefs are too little, too late, too small and too stingy,”he said to several hundred people at Los Angeles’ Loyola Marymount University. Companies, he added, should invest more in the people they employ, adding,”we must treat our people like any other part of the production force … Countries with an educated workforce do better than countries that don’t have one.” The Irish-born bishop also was critical of governments and politicians that have little interest in redeeming prisoners.”The more prisons we build, the quicker they’re filled.,”Martin said. Incarceration, he concluded, means”deprivation of liberty, not deprivation of dignity.” Quote of the Day: Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of “Kosher Sex.” (RNS)”Notice the Ten Commandments prohibit a man from lusting after his neighbor’s wife. It offers no prohibition against lusting after your own wife.” _ Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of”Kosher Sex”(Doubleday), in which he maintains that sex for pleasure within marriage strengthens a relationship and is a gift from God, as quoted in an interview in the Washington Times (March 26). IR END RNS
