c. 1999 Religion News Service
“Evangelicals and Catholics Together”critics seek repentant signers
(RNS) Opponents of the controversial document”Evangelicals and Catholics Together”have called on the evangelical Protestants who signed the document five years ago to repent of their association with it.
The signers of the ECT document were asked”to publicly renounce the ECT accords and ask the church at large for forgiveness for their past participation in these accords,”said Tom McMahon, chairman of a conference that ended March 27 near Dallas.
The”Public Call to Repentance”came at the conclusion of”ECT (Plus) 5: A Biblical Response,”an annual conference of the ExCatholics for Christ. About 600 people, some representing evangelical ministries that focus on evangelizing Roman Catholics, attended.
The meeting marked the fifth anniversary of the ECT, which was signed by such prominent evangelical leaders as Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright and Prison Fellowship founder Charles Colson.
The unofficial document, which intended to foster greater cooperation between Protestant evangelicals and Roman Catholics, called on members of the two segments of Christianity to recognize each other as Christians and work together on common issues, such as abortion and pornography.
But it also caused a great deal of friction among evangelicals because some believed the declaration undermined their basic Protestant beliefs.”The ECT documents are deceitful at best, destructively heretical at worst,”said McMahon, summarizing concerns about both the ECT document and a subsequent 1997 document called”The Gift of Salvation,”also signed by prominent Catholics and evangelical Protestants.”The ECT documents have led multitudes of Christians to believe that there is agreement between the Church of Rome, with its false gospel, and the gospel in which evangelicals have put their trust.” McMahon, executive director of The Berean Call, an evangelical ministry in Bend, Ore., added that the conference attendees were not”judging the heart or motivation”of the signers but were speaking out because of”our love for them and for the Body of Christ.” James G. McCarthy, a co-founder of ExCatholics for Christ and director of the California-based Good News for Catholics, said conference organizers sent letters to the evangelical Protestant signers of ECT offering them an opportunity to remove their names before the conference began.
Three signers responded, declining to have their names removed, and”basically stating that we were misunderstanding their intentions,”said McCarthy, author of”The Gospel According to Rome,”a critical comparison of the”Catechism of the Catholic Church”to the Bible.
Catholic League opposes Easter drag-queen celebration in San Francisco
(RNS) The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has urged Catholic organizations to hold their conventions in cities other than San Francisco because a group featuring drag queens in nuns’ habits plans to hold a celebration there on Easter Sunday.”Let’s face it, we’re not going to bring San Francisco to its knees,”said league President William Donohue.”In the long run, we hope Catholics will awaken from their slumber and realize it’s late in the day if they want to fight for their rights.” The New York-based Catholic group used a half-page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle, published Monday (March 29), to encourage other Catholic organizations to boycott the city as a convention site unless the drag queens pick another day for the celebration, the Associated Press reported.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence is a group of mostly gay men who dress in unusual habits, wigs and elaborate makeup. The group says it was founded on Easter Sunday and will continue to mark the date with a celebration.
Among the plans for the street party in San Francisco’s Castro district are an Easter bonnet competition and a”hunky Jesus”contest.
The group has held a”Condom Savior Mass”and, during the 1997 visit of Pope John Paul II, it performed an”exorcism.” The league also has criticized the city’s Board of Supervisors, which granted a permit for the celebration. After receiving complaints, Mayor Willie Brown and other city officials asked the supervisors to reconsider. On Monday night, the supervisors upheld their decision to grant the permit.
The drag queens raise money for charitable groups dealing with gay rights and AIDS causes, but Donohue said that does not impress him.”It’s like a group that’s anti-black or anti-Jewish or anti-gay contributing to fighting AIDS,”he said.
Evangelical Christians to hold large rallies in Cuba
(RNS) Evangelical Christians have been granted permission by the communist government of Cuba to hold large rallies there in May and June.
Churches will be permitted to hold local open-air gatherings of the”Cuban Evangelical Celebration”in May, the Assemblies of God news agency reported.
Organizers hope one of the June rallies will be held in Havana’s Revolution Square, where Pope John Paul II held his largest Mass last year.”Given what we know at this time about church growth on the island, if the right circumstances come together, half a million people might come to the Havana celebration alone,”said the Rev. Richard Nicholson, regional director of Latin America and the Caribbean for the Assemblies of God’s Division of Foreign Missions.
The Assemblies of God is one of the largest evangelical churches in the country. Nicholson said the church has grown”conservatively”from 80 church groups a decade ago to about 2,500 currently meeting across the island.
A number of follow-up activities are being planned in hopes of turning the rallies into a long-term evangelistic outreach. The Cuban Bible Society is printing 500,000 Bibles and 250,000 New Testaments for the occasions. Several ministries of the Assemblies of God are preparing tracts, Bibles and other gospel literature to distribute during and after the rallies.
Study finds NCC-designed Bible study improves view of government
(RNS) A study released Tuesday (March 30) found civic involvement and attitudes toward government were modestly boosted among participants in the course, Christians and Government, designed by the National Council of Churches.”We are pleased with the results, that attitudes can change when people wrestle with issues from a biblical perspective,”said Richard Killmer, associate director of the national ministries unit of the NCC, who was responsible for the study.
The course asked participants, ranging from Roman Catholics to African Methodist Episcopalians to members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), to confront biblical passages such as that found in Proverbs 31:”Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of those that are destitute.”In light of that passage and others, the study guide asks,”What does government do for people? What are some responsibilities of an American citizen?” The study is the result of surveys completed by some 289 people before and after participating in the council’s course held at local churches across the country.
Overall, the survey found that participants reported higher levels of confidence in government after the five-week session which included Bible study and hearing a sermon on the subject. Most respondents were also less cynical and more committed to getting involved after taking the course.
In most areas, the gains were modest. When asked whether they trust the government to do the right thing,”most of the time,”or”just about always,”44 percent responded favorably, prior to the course. Upon completion, that figure rose to 57 percent.
The Christians and Government project was launched to combat cynicism toward government, according to Killmer. He described its aim as”replacing cynicism with a healthy balance of criticism and confidence in government.” Although the gains so far have been modest, Killmer called the initial result encouraging.”We are pleased that democracy was strengthened because people want to get more involved,”he said.”We let people do their own wrestling.”
Pope to beatify 108 Poles who died at the hands of the Nazis
(RNS) Pope John Paul II will beatify 108 Poles who died at the hands of the Nazis during World War II, when he visits his native Poland in June, the Vatican has announced.
The Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints cleared the way for beatification, the last step before sainthood, by certifying at a ceremony attended by the pope that all 108 had died as martyrs to their faith.
John Paul will declare the group blessed at a Mass he will celebrate in Warsaw on June 13 during a 12-day visit that will take him to 20 Polish cities and include an address to the National Assembly. He will be in Poland from June 5 to 17.
The pope, who was a member of the Polish underground during World War II, has been criticized by Jewish groups in the past for singling out the relatively small number of Catholics who died alongside millions of Jews in Nazi death camps.
The newly declared martyrs include three bishops, 78 priests, eight nuns, seven monks, three seminarians and nine lay people. Seventy-six of them died in Nazi death camps, 46 at Dachau, 14 at Auschwitz and the rest at Sachsenhausen and Stutthof.
Among them are Sister Kemensa Staszewska, put to death in Auschwitz because she had tried to hide Jewish girls in her convent, and Maria Anna Biernacka, a widow who asked Nazi occupation forces to arrest her instead of her eight-month pregnant daughter-in-law.
The Rev. Flavio Peloso, the”postulator”who presented the case for beatification, said that 62 of the group died violently,”many under torture, by decapitation or hanging, shot or killed in the gas chamber.””For the other 46, death was inflicted in an indirect but nonetheless cruel manner because it was provoked by torture, maltreatment, pseudo-medical experiments, using them as guinea pigs, or by exhaustion from hunger or overwork,”he said.
Peloso said the Nazis interned a total of 2,794 priests and religious of 21 nationalities, including 1,773 Poles, at Dachau. He said 1,034 of them were killed, including 868 Poles.
Quote of the day: Mavis Leno, wife of TV talk show host Jay Leno
(RNS)”Once people understand this is not the culture or the nature of Islam, that it’s something imposed from the outside, they are with us.” _ Mavis Leno, wife of TV talk show host Jay Leno, explaining why she is working on a campaign to denounce the Islamic Taliban movement that currently runs much of Afghanistan and its imposition of strict controls on women, including barring them from attending school.
DEA END RNS