c. 1999 Religion News Service

Serb Orthodox priest plans Washington office to counter NATO viewpoint

(RNS) Fresh from his recent trip to Belgrade with Jesse Jackson, a Serbian Orthodox priest plans to establish an office in Washington to counter NATO’s and the Pentagon’s views on the war in Yugoslavia.

The Rev. Irinej Dobrijevic, of the Cleveland suburb of Broadview Heights, will head the office. He will reach out to the national press in an effort to present Serbs as caring people who do not deserve to have their homeland destroyed in NATO’s war against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, according to a church official helping to set up the Washington office.”We feel that the representation of the Serbian people has been so one-sided”by NATO, the State Department and Pentagon”that we’re trying to get out our position, both of opposing Milosevic and seeking additional and humane means of accomplishing what it is NATO is trying to accomplish,”said Robert Jakovich Jr., president of the executive board of St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church in Broadview Heights and treasurer of the national Serbian Orthodox Church council.

Dobrijevic, 44, who was in the 19-member delegation that traveled with Jackson and brought three American prisoners out of captivity, will work under the auspices of the denomination’s national church council.

Church officials are considering renting an office in a business suite near the White House and have accepted private donations to fund the effort, which may open in two to three weeks, Jakovich said.

Dobrijevic is also the Serb denomination’s liaison officer to International Orthodox Christian Charities, the pan-Orthodox relief agency.

The Washington office, which will represent the interests of an estimated 2 million Serbian-Americans, may eventually engage in lobbying, Jakovich said.

Harvard Divinity School dean forced to resign due to porn link

(RNS) Harvard Divinity School’s dean was forced to resign last fall after pornography was found on his computer.

Harvard University asked Ronald F. Thiemann to resign for”conduct unbecoming a dean”after President Neil L. Rudenstine was alerted about the matter, the Associated Press reported Wednesday (May 19).”They agreed that it would be in the best interests of the divinity school for the dean to resign,”said Joe Wrinn, Harvard spokesman.

The explicit material allegedly was found last fall after the former dean requested additional disk space on a school-owned computer at the office in his Harvard-owned residence, the Boston Globe reported, citing unidentified sources.

Thiemann allegedly asked the computer department to transfer the images to the new disk drive. The material was not child pornography or illegal in any other way, the sources said.

Thiemann did not comment, the newspaper reported. Charles Ogletree, his lawyer, said several factors led to his client’s resignation, but he declined to respond to the allegations.”The measure of a man like Ron Thiemann cannot be determined in response to allegations such as these but in the context of the admiration and respect he has gained from colleagues at the university, in the theological community and the secular community,”said Ogletree.

Thiemann was divinity school dean for more than 12 years and was credited with numerous feats, including the creation of the school’s Center for the Study of Values in Public Life.

He has taken a year’s sabbatical but remains a tenured member of the faculty.

Thiemann did not disclose the reasons for his departure at the time of his resignation, but told faculty members he was attempting to cope with depression.”He said that he’d been ordered or strongly advised by his doctor to go on leave, to resign from the deanship and return as a teacher,”said Harvard professor William Hutchinson.

North Carolina Baptist board approves shared-leadership plan

(RNS) The General Board of the North Carolina Baptist State Convention has approved a shared-leadership plan it hopes will ease a long-standing division between moderates and conservatives in the state’s largest Protestant group.

The plan, approved overwhelmingly Tuesday (May 18), now goes to the entire 1.2 million-member convention for a vote this November. If approved, it would mark a turning point in Baptist history. So far, no other state convention affiliated with the national Southern Baptist Convention has been able to overcome theological and political differences by sharing leadership.

Under the plan,”messengers,”or delegates to the annual convention, would take turns electing conservatives and moderates to key positions, such as the presidency of the convention and the presidency of the general board.

Only three people voiced opposition to the plan when the estimated 100 general board members assembled in Asheboro.”The attitude was, `We’ve got to try something. Let’s give it a shot,'”said Bill Boatwright, a spokesman for the convention.

Under the guidelines, the plan would take effect for six trial years _ from 2000 to 2006 _ unless messengers voted to keep it indefinitely.

The plan’s backers say it is a compromise that might stave off the divorce that has torn the Texas and Virginia state conventions into two separate organizations. Since conservatives took over the national Southern Baptist Convention in 1979, Baptists in different states have waged a bitter fight over the control of independent state conventions.

Until 1995, North Carolina was governed by moderate presidents with an overwhelmingly moderate general board. Since then, it has elected conservative presidents who have appointed conservative members to the board.

Leaders within the convention hope the plan will allow the two groups to focus on evangelism and outreach, two areas where they agree. Both groups concede they will not be able to smooth over other differences such as the interpretation of scripture and the role of women.

Vatican bars Canadian bishop from speaking at married priests’ meeting

(RNS) The Vatican has barred recently retired Bishop Remi De Roo of Victoria, British Columbia, from addressing a conference in Atlanta that will urge the Roman Catholic Church to allow priests to marry.

The Vatican’s Canadian envoy told De Roo in a letter his presence at the July 28 worldwide congress of the International Federation of Married Catholic Priests”would be a great source of possible scandal and confusion to the faithful.” After receiving the letter, De Roo withdrew from the conference, which meets every three years to support the thousands of Catholic priests who have left the active priesthood to marry and have children, but who wish to continue in a priestly role.

Francois Brassard, a married Vancouver Island Catholic priest who still performs weddings, baptisms and spiritual counseling in private homes and halls, said he was”not going to judge”De Roo for caving in to the Vatican demand.

But Brassard, who is a friend of De Roo’s and says he operates with his unofficial blessing, expressed disappointment the liberal bishop didn’t choose to speak at the Atlanta conference, thereby taking advantage of his new freedom since retiring in February at age 75.”I felt it was a big chance for him to take a stand,”said Brassard, an activist with CORPUS Canada, a group for married priests helping sponsor the Atlanta event.

De Roo was out of the country and unavailable for comment.

The letter was sent on behalf of Canada’s Ottawa-based papal nuncio, Archbishop Paolo Romeo, the pope’s top representative in Canada. It said it was the pope’s desire De Roo remove his name from the proposed speakers list because the Atlanta conference was being sponsored by church reform groups that support not only married male priests, but also female priests.

Terry Dosh, a conference organizer from Minneapolis, said De Roo was the only bishop who had agreed to speak.

Canada has about 8,000 married priests and the United States is home to 23,000 more, Dosh said.

Polls repeatedly show about one-third of those retired priests would like to continue to serve the church as clerics, Dosh said, adding that the majority of North American Catholics would support the idea.

Anthony Padovano, U.S. vice president of the International Federation of Married Priests, called the Vatican’s move against De Roo”another example of the desperate and unrelenting resistance”of the pope to reform.

First lady praises relief groups, pledges new aid

(RNS) In the wake of her visit to Kosovar refugee camps in Macedonia last weekend, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday (May 18) unveiled a $15 million refugee aid package and paid tribute to Catholic Relief Services and other non-governmental groups working with the refugees.”It is no exaggeration to say that we could not care for the hundreds of thousands of refugees from Kosovo without the commitment, hard work and absolute determination of (non-governmental organizations) like CRS,”Clinton told a White House briefing. She was flanked by poster-sized pictures of her visit to the massive CRS-run tent city of Stankovac I, home to 18,000 ethnic Albanian refugees.

As many as one-third of the 750,000 ethnic Albanians who have crossed borders out of Kosovo have settled in Macedonia.

Clinton said the money would be distributed to several groups providing aid to Kosovar refugees, including U.N. organizations and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The money will also support plans to relocate 20,000 refugees in the United States.

The new money brings U.S. aid to refugees to at least $200 million.

Clinton called the visit”heartbreaking,”and told of her talks with refugees and”stories of families separated, of girls raped, of men executed, of homes destroyed.”Nothing makes the case more powerfully for why the United States and our NATO allies are pursuing their mission in Kosovo, and why we cannot give up until the evils perpetrated by (Yugoslav President Slobodan) Milosevic and his regime have been stopped and the refugees returned home in peace and safety,”she said.

Ken Hackett, executive director of CRS, who recently returned from Albania, said Clinton’s visit was a”great example for all of us.””Just as we strive to win a war, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the victims of that war cannot be allowed to suffer unduly during that process,”said Hackett.”The goal is a peaceful return to Kosovo, where Kosovars can live a life where their rights as a people are protected, where their dignity is assured.” Costing $400,000 daily, CRS relief operations in Kosovo are the largest the organization has mobilized since the Ethopian famine in 1983, Hackett told Religion News Service.

Vatican accuses Rwandan leaders of trying to defame the church

(RNS) The Vatican has accused Rwandan leaders of waging an”out and out defamatory campaign”against the Roman Catholic Church that blocks efforts for reconciliation in Rwanda and threatens ethnic coexistence throughout the continent.

The charge was made in a three-page statement,”Rwandan Genocide: The Last Act,”issued by the Vatican press office Tuesday (May 18).

Citing the arrest of Bishop Augustin Misago of Gikongoro on April 14 for alleged complicity in the massacres that killed 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994, the Vatican said”ethnic coexistence”on African soil is at risk.”In Rwanda, an out and out defamatory campaign is under way against the Catholic Church to make it appear responsible for the genocide of ethnic Tutsis that shook the country in 1994,”the statement said.”The arrest of Monsignor Misago exactly five years after the start of the massacres can be considered the last act of a strategy of the Rwandan government to reduce or eliminate the reconciliatory role the church has played in the history of Rwanda in the past and still today, trying in every way to dirty its image,”the Vatican said.

Noting that bishops in Burundi, Tanzania, France and the Democratic Republic of Congo are among those who have come to the defense of Misago and the church in Rwanda, the Vatican said,”All express concern over the massive attack that threatens to plunge the future of coexistence into crisis throughout the African continent.” Other prelates also face charges, the statement said. It said government-run newspapers have accused Archbishop Thaddee Ntihinyurwa of Kigali of participating in the genocide and attacked Bishop Andre Perraudin, the retired bishop of Kabgayi now living in Switzerland, for a pastoral letter he wrote in 1959, calling for social reforms to benefit Hutus, then a repressed majority.

First class of West Coast rabbis graduated

(RNS) The University of Judaism has graduated the West Coast’s first class of Conservative rabbis.

At graduation ceremonies Monday (May 17), the university’s Conservative-affiliated Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies ordained eight students as rabbis, four years after it became a full rabbinical seminary.

The graduates, four men and four women, will work as Jewish community professionals and heads of Jewish day schools and synagogues. They came from prestigious schools like Brown and Northwestern universities and the University of Chicago.

The University of Judaism is marking its 50th anniversary this year.

Ziegler Dean Daniel Gordis said the May 17 graduation was”truly an unprecedented event, one that we have anticipated with great joy for a long time.”

Pope names five Americans to Pontifical Council for the Family

(RNS) Pope John Paul II has named Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston and four prominent American lay men and women to the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Vatican said Wednesday (May 19).

Law will serve on the council’s President’s Committee, which is headed by another U.S. prelate, Cardinal Francis Stafford, formerly of Denver.

The pope named Jerome F. Coniker and his wife, Gwen, as members of the council. Coniker is president of the Apostolate for Family Consecration, which operates Catholic Familyland in Bloomingdale, Ohio.

Dr. David F. Fort of Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio, and Mary Ann Glendon, a professor at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass., will serve on the council’s board of expert consultors. Glendon was a Vatican delegate to the U.N. Conference on Population held in Cairo in 1994.

The council, established by the pope in 1981, promotes pastoral care of Roman Catholic families. It also encourages them to take part in education and evangelization and to support church teachings on such issues as the defense of human life and responsible procreation.

The members include clergy, married couples and academics from throughout the world, who meet in an annual general assembly.

Quote of the day: James Bradley, director of the Peabody Andover Museum

(RNS)”We sent them a letter and said, `We have a lot of your stuff.’ They said, `We know. Let’s talk.'” _ James Bradley, director of the Peabody Andover Museum at Harvard University on the decision to return the bones of nearly 2,000 American Indians for ceremonial burial.

DEA END RNS