c. 1999 Religion News Service

Vatican says pope won’t visit Iraq

(RNS) Pope John Paul II’s hoped-for trip to Iraq to visit the traditional birthplace of the biblical patriarch Abraham is off because Baghdad says the international sanctions against it that limit trade and airplane traffic make it impossible to properly plan the visit.

The Roman Catholic leader had said he wanted to visit the site of Ur of the Chaldees, now in Iraq, Abraham’s traditional birthplace, as part of a planned millennium tour of the Holy Land.

No date had ever been set for the visit to Ur, but Iraqi church leaders had said they expected the pope to visit in January. A Vatican advance team recently traveled to Baghdad.

Since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, allied warplanes have been patrolling so-called no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq. Iraq is also under U.N. sanctions for having invaded Kuwait.

Iraq reportedly told the Vatican that it could not organize the trip because of the U.N. embargo and the no-fly zones.

The U.S. and British governments and Iraqi exile groups had expressed misgivings about such a visit, saying Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would use it for propaganda purposes.

The pope said the visit would be purely religious and devoid of political significance.

A brief Vatican statement Friday (Dec. 10) saying the possible visit to Ur was off did not elaborate, the Associated Press reported.

The Iraqi government never issued a formal invitation.

A church leader in Baghdad said the trip has been only delayed, not canceled, and claimed the visit was put off because the pope’s security could not be guaranteed.

“Americans and English have the entire airspace in their hands,” the Chaldean church patriarch Rafael Bedaweed told the Vatican’s missionary news service, Fides. He said if anything happened to the pope during the visit, “certainly the international community would blame Iraq.”

The pope is expected to visit Holy Land sites in Israel, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan in March, but tensions over the building of a mosque near a church have raised questions about the itinerary.

Hawaii Supreme Court ends efforts to legalize gay marriage

(RNS) The Hawaii Supreme Court has ended efforts to legalize gay marriage in the state, which once was expected to approve same-sex unions.

The court ruled Thursday (Dec. 9) that the attempts by homosexual couples were rendered moot by a 1998 state constitutional amendment approved overwhelmingly by voters. That amendment gave lawmakers authority to limit state-recognized marriages to opposite-sex couples.

The court considered an appeal of a lower court decision that the state could not justify its 1994 ban on same-sex unions. The judge in the case had ordered the state to grant marriage licenses to homosexual couples, then delayed the order pending the appeal.

Lawmakers later drafted the amendment giving them the authority to approve the ban. In 1998, voters affirmed the proposal by a 2-to-1 margin.”Thank you to the Hawaii Supreme Court for affirming what we’ve known all along _ that marriage, by God’s definition, is between opposite-sex couples,”said Mike Gabbard, chairman of the Alliance for Traditional Marriage, the Associated Press reported.

Members of Hawaii’s homosexual community had expected the high court to grant equal protections to gays, said Sue Reardon, a Kailua high school teacher who wants to marry her female partner.”The people’s vote was based on fear and a lack of knowledge and understanding,”said Reardon, who was not a plaintiff.”But the Supreme Court is expected to understand, or at least to be knowledgeable of, civil rights. This is a sad day for Hawaii.” Plaintiff Joseph Melillo also reacted with disappointment to the court’s ruling.”It’s very difficult to see how they arrived at this decision,”he said.”It’s really a cop-out.”

Calif. district bans Boy Scout use of school communication methods

(RNS) A Northern California school district has prohibited the Boy Scouts from using its schools to distribute notices, saying the organization’s policies violate district policy by excluding atheists and gays.

David Murphy, superintendent of the Davis Joint Unified School District, wrote the Scouts to say that starting this month (December) it cannot use parent-teacher association newsletters, school bulletin boards and student folders to recruit and communicate with students or parents.

Murphy said the change in policy occurred after parents complained that groups that discriminate should not be permitted to use schools to send home materials about their activities, the Associated Press reported.

He said the free speech rights of the Boy Scouts are not being violated because communication through the schools is a privilege that can be legally rescinded.

Boy Scout officials in the Sacramento area said the decision would complicate their efforts to recruit members.”I really don’t want to stir up a lot of anti-Scouting feeling by telling the superintendent of schools that he’s wrong,”said Doug McDonald, Scout executive for the Golden Empire Chapter.”But we’ll continue to emphasize our traditional family values, and we’ll just go into a different mode of recruitment.” Cities across the United States have barred the Boy Scouts from free use of public facilities because of Scouting policies that include a ban on gay and atheist troop leaders.

Baptists Today announces new executive editor

(RNS) Baptists Today, an independent national Baptist newspaper based in Macon, Ga., has named a new executive editor.

John Pierce, the managing editor of The Christian Index, the newspaper of the Baptist Convention of the State of Georgia, has taken the post.

Pierce, 43, is a former campus minister who worked at the Index, the news journal for Georgia’s Southern Baptists, since 1994. He is scheduled to begin his new job Feb. 1.

He succeeds Bob Ballance, Baptists Today’s previous editor, who resigned abruptly in October. Ballance has said he departed due to”a radical difference”with directors over the future of the paper, Associated Baptist Press, an independent news service, reported.

In announcing Pierce’s selection, James McAfee, chairman of the Baptists Today board, said:”The board’s vision and John’s vision are similar. We want Baptists Today to play an important role in celebrating, informing and encouraging Baptist lay people and their congregations.”

Trinity Lutheran Seminary president to retire

(RNS) The president of Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, has announced his retirement plans.

The Rev. Dennis A. Anderson, 62, will retire next Nov. 30 from the educational institution, one of eight seminaries of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Since he became president in 1990, the seminary’s enrollment has increased significantly and its endowment fund rose from $11 million to $38 million, the ELCA News Service reported.

Prior to his presidential role, Anderson was bishop of the Nebraska Synod of the former Lutheran Church in America and later of the ELCA when it formed in 1988.

Quote of the Day: The Rev. Jeff Burress of Fort Gibson, Okla.

(RNS)”We are not here to explain why bad things happen to good people or why good people do bad things. We are here to help all people _ people who cause violence and people who suffer from violence _ experience God’s grace so they can overcome fear and anger and live in peace with hope and love.” _ The Rev. Jeff Burress, pastor of First United Methodist Church of Fort Gibson, Okla. A teen-age member of his congregation shot five students at the town’s middle school on Dec. 6.

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