c. 1999 Religion News Service

House Majority Leader Dick Armey named Distinguished Christian Statesman

(RNS) House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, has been awarded the Distinguished Christian Statesman award from the D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship.

The Washington-based center, which provides spiritual outreach to members of Congress and their staffs, annually honors a public leader who shows commitment to character, integrity and Christian beliefs.”Strength of character is not an accident of nature,”said Frank Wright, center director.”It is the outworking of a life devoted to high ideals like courage, compassion, commitment, conscience and conviction. Dick Armey is just such a man.” When he received the award Wednesday (Oct. 6), Armey commented on the recent remarks by Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura criticizing organized religion.”We must speak up for our faith,”said Armey.”Quietly, firmly, assertively and with love we must require that our faith and the practice of our faith be respected.” The center was started by Kennedy, the prominent pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America.

Past winners of the award include Roy S. Moore, an Alabama circuit court judge; former Sen. Dan Coats, an Indiana Republican; and Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo.

Update: Nazareth court rules against Muslims in land dispute

(RNS) An Israeli court has ruled that Muslim leaders in Nazareth have no legal right to block construction of a planned plaza area next to the Basilica of the Annunciation that would accommodate millions of Christian pilgrims expected to visit during 2000.

Nazareth’s Christian mayor has wanted to turn the empty lot into a plaza for pilgrims, but Muslim activists seized the land two years ago and erected a makeshift mosque on the site. They insisted the land was owned by the local waqf, or Islamic religious trust, and a permanent mosque should be constructed on the plot.

Nazareth, the town of Jesus’ boyhood, has in recent years changed from a Christian-majority to a Muslim-majority city. The basilica is built over the site where tradition says the Angel Gabriel told Mary she would give birth to Jesus.

Thursday (Oct. 7), the Nazareth District Court ruled only about 135 square yards of the half-acre plot is legally owned by the waqf, the rest being state land. The court also said construction of a plaza would not infringe on the grave of a Muslim sage located on the waqf’s property, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported.

The court ruling came just hours after Muslims told a press conference they might accept a mosque on just a portion of the land. It also followed an unprecedented appeal from the heads of Israel’s three major Christian groups _ Orthodox, Armenian and Latin (Roman Catholic) _ asking Prime Minister Ehud Barak to take”urgent steps”to resolve the dispute.

Pope John Paul II is expected to visit Nazareth in March as part of his Holy Land tour celebrating 2000 years of Christianity. There has been speculation, denied by the Israeli government, that the land dispute might keep the pontiff away from Nazareth.

Cardinal Martini urges wider authority for bishops

(RNS) Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milan, Italy, has called on the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church to look for a new way to join together to meet the most pressing problems of the post-Vatican II church.

Martini, a Jesuit scholar who is considered a possible successor to Pope John Paul II, spoke Thursday (Oct. 7), addressing 162 of his fellow prelates attending a special assembly of European bishops. The bishops responded with applause, unusual at such a meeting.

The Vatican issued a summary of Martini’s speech Friday.

Noting that the decrees of the Second Vatican Council have had 40 years to reach maturity, Martini asked the prelates to consider”the usefulness and almost the necessity of a collegial and authoritative confrontation among all the bishops on some … issues that have emerged over these 40 years.””There is, moreover the sense of how beautiful and useful it would be for the bishops of today and of tomorrow in a church that is ever more diversified in its languages to repeat that experience of communion, collegiality and holy spirit that their predecessors had at Vatican II and that now is no longer a living memory except for a few witnesses,”Martini said.

Martini made clear, however, he was not calling for a Third Vatican Council or for another in the series of synods of bishops like the present three-week assembly of Europe’s bishops.

What he sought, he said, is a new”instrument”that would provide a”place where we can discuss with freedom and exercise to the full our episcopal collegiality, listening to the holy spirit and reflecting on the common good of the church and the whole of humanity.” Martini asked the bishops to reflect on how to find or invent an instrument to provide the”new and broad experiences of collegiality”needed to help them meet the problems the church faces today.

The most pressing problems, he said, are how to deepen and develop the communion among bishops that started with Vatican II, the serious shortage of ordained ministers, the position of women in society and the church, the participation of the laity with some ministerial responsibility, sexuality, the discipline of matrimony, the penitential procedure, relations with the Orthodox churches and ecumenical dialogue in general, and the relation of democracy and civil values with moral laws.

The present three-week synod, which will conclude Oct. 23, will draw up and present to the pope a list of”propositions”containing the bishops’ findings on how to meet the needs of the church in the next millennium.

Moscow court lifts Scientology’s license to operate center

(RNS) A Moscow court has revoked the license of the city’s Church of Scientology center.

The court said the license was revoked because the names on the Humanitarian Hubbard Center’s registration documents were found to have no actual connection to the center, the Associated Press reported. Prosecutors said they acted after receiving dozens of complaints from parents who said their children were being influenced by Scientologists.

Alexi Danchenkov, a center spokesman, said the registration form had been corrected in 1997. He charged prosecutors and the court with conspiring with the Russian Orthodox Church in the case.”These are methods of eradicating nonprofit organizations and are tied to the ongoing struggle of the Orthodox church to re-establish its complete dominance,”he said.

The center, named after Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, was given 10 days from the court’s Friday (Oct. 8) ruling to appeal or close its doors.

A host of minority religious groups in Russia have had registration problems since the government passed a 1997 law requiring them to reapply for permission to operate. The law has been widely perceived as favoring the Orthodox church, which has lost thousands of members in recent decades.

Prominent Canadian Catholic priest caught shoplifting

(RNS) One of the best known Roman Catholic priests in Vancouver, British Columbia, has been placed on stress leave after being caught shoplifting.

Monsignor Pedro Lopez-Gallo, who writes a weekly column on marriage for The B.C. Catholic newspaper, was writhing in back pain and addled by medication just before he was caught shoplifting last weekend, said Vancouver Archbishop Adam Exner.

A parishioner who found the priest”in bad shape”just before he stole a pack of razor blades from a Vancouver supermarket tried to phone the archbishop to say there was something wrong. But Lopez-Gallo had”vehemently objected”to the call, Exner said.

The parishioner’s description of the monsignor’s physical agony and emotional distress fits into what a Simon Fraser University criminal psychologist says is a classic portrait of the kind of people who uncharacteristically shoplift a trivial item.”An atypical theft is often linked to physical or mental suffering or depression,”psychologist Steve Hart said Wednesday. Research shows, Hart said, that many prominent, well-off individuals who are caught shoplifting are”well-adjusted people. And, interestingly, they’re often churchgoers. Stealing doesn’t fit into their value system at all.” Lopez-Gallo, 70, is the judicial vicar of Vancouver’s Roman Catholic marriage tribunal and has a weekly column, with his photo, in The B.C. Catholic, the official newspaper of the 330,000-member Vancouver Catholic archdiocese.”I’ve known him for eight years and this is just totally out of character,”said Exner, who placed the monsignor on stress leave.”The influence of the pain and the medication may have affected his judgment,”Exner said.”Perhaps his psychological state was such that he wasn’t fully aware of what was happening. I’m not a psychologist, I wouldn’t want to dabble in that, but I do intend to provide him with whatever help he may need to sort things out.” The archbishop said Lopez-Gallo didn’t deny the shoplifting incident.

Editor of moderate newspaper Baptists Today resigns

(RNS) The executive editor of Baptist Today, a moderate newspaper based in Macon, Ga., has resigned.

The transition occurs barely a year after Bob Ballance accepted the position.

Ballance, 41, has become interim pastor of Heritage Baptist Church in Cartersville, Ga., reported Associated Baptist Press, an independent news service.

His departure was announced in a terse news release on Oct. 6 and gave no reason for the resignation.

The newspaper’s board of directors has begun a search for his successor. Oby Brown, who was hired last year as the paper’s managing editor, will serve as interim executive editor of the monthly publication.

Prosecutor in Guatemalan bishop’s slaying quits

(RNS) The Guatemalan prosecutor probing possible military involvement in the murder of Roman Catholic Bishop Juan Gerardi resigned Thursday (Oct. 7) and fled the country in fear.

He is the second key official probing the death of the human rights champion to have left the country citing death threats.

Prosecutor Celvin Galindo told a local Guatemalan radio network from an undisclosed location in the United States that he was”frustrated at not reaching the end (of the case), but I believe that in reaching the end of the case I would run a very great risk,”the Associated Press reported.”Sadly in Guatemala there is a lack of security conditions to continue, and above all the internal support to be able to continue on so grave a case as this,”he said.

Gerardi, the head of the Catholic Church’s human rights agency, was bludgeoned to death on April 26, 1998, just two days after releasing a major report on human rights abuses during the country’s 36-year civil war. The report put most of the blame for the abuses _ including killings and disappearances _ on the military.

The investigation of Gerardi’s murder has been plagued with problems.

The first judge and prosecutor overseeing the case were forced to resign after international complaints that they had deliberately ignored evidence that the army might have been involved in the slaying.

The second judge, Henry Monroy, quit in March after only a month on the job and fled to Canada. He said he had received death threats after authorizing an investigation of possible political motivations in the case.

Brewer makes beer to honor wife’s ordination to the priesthood

(RNS) A brewer in Exeter, England, has raised at least $2,000 for his local hospice by brewing a beer in honor of his wife’s ordination to the Anglican priesthood and giving a portion of each pint sold to the hospice.

The beer, Curate’s Choice, carries a portrait of the Rev. Sue Sheppard in clerical collar on every barrel and every tap handle dispensing the beer.”The recipe was formulated on her advice, and she thinks the beer is very nice,”said Guy Sheppard, the brewer.

Nor, according to reports, is she alone among her clerical colleagues in appreciating it.”Quite a lot of clerics have been drinking it, but I don’t think they’ve been drinking a lot of it,”the brewer said.

The Rev. Sheppard works as a chaplain in an Exeter school and as a non-stipendiary curate in a group of parishes just north of the city.

Quote of the day: Robert E. Reccord, Southern Baptist Convention official

(RNS)”The minute we close the doors in the church is the minute we quit being the church.” _ Robert E. Reccord, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board, speaking at a Wednesday (Oct. 6) meeting of the board’s trustees about the danger of overreacting to incidents like the recent fatal shootings at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. He was quoted by Baptist Press, the official news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.

DEA END RNS