c. 1999 Religion News Service
Polish Catholic activist indicted in connection with Auschwitz crosses
(RNS) A conservative Roman Catholic activist who led the campaign to erect crosses outside the site of the former Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland has been indicted.
Kazimierz Switon was charged with inciting hate against Jews and with insulting Jews and Germans. The indictment was filed Monday (March 1) in the local court in Oswiecim, the Polish town near the death-camp site.
The charges carry a maximum three-year prison term.
Switon called the indictment”absurd.””I only said the truth and will prove it in the court,”he told the Associated Press.
Last summer, Switon launched a campaign to prevent officials from removing a large, wooden cross placed at the camp and used during a 1988 papal Mass. Jews complained that the cross was disrespectful to the memory of the more than 1 million Jews who died at Auschwitz as part of the Nazi attempt to wipe out European Jewry.
Switon’s group urged conservative Catholics to place some 200 small crosses at the campsite in memory, they said, of the 152 Polish Catholics who also died there.
In their indictment, officials cited leaflets distributed by Switon. One leaflet said”the time has come for us, Poles, to wage merciless war on Jewish-communist-masonry, the biggest enemies of the Polish state.”The leaflets also described Israel and Germany as”satanic-pagan forces aiming at extermination of the Polish nation.”
Lutherans urged to support a common date for Easter
(RNS) Lutheran churches around the world are being asked to accept a proposal to set a common date for Easter and end a division between Christian churches in the West and those of the East.
In a letter to the 124 member-churches of the Lutheran World Federation, the Rev. Ishmael Noko, LWF general secretary, asked that the churches study the proposal drawn up two years ago at an ecumenical consultation in Aleppo, Syria.
In most years, Easter, the festival which marks the resurrection of Jesus, is celebrated on two different dates _ one by Roman Catholics and most Protestants, and the other by most Orthodox churches.
This year, for example, the Western churches will mark Easter on April 4, while Orthodox churches will celebrate the festival a week later, on April 11.
The Council of Nicea, in 325 A.D., laid down the principle that Easter falls on the annually variable date of the first Sunday following the full moon after the northern spring equinox. In practice, however, the dates differ because the Eastern churches date the equinox using the Julian calendar and the Western churches have adopted the reform calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in the 16th century.
The Aleppo proposal called for churches to use”the most accurate astronomical scientific knowledge”available to calculate the date, adding that the year 2001 would be an ideal year in which to inaugurate an agreed set of dates because in that year both churches in the East and West will celebrate April 15 as Easter.”What is at stake is more than the issue of a common date for Easter, it is the issue of the unity of the church around an event that defines the church as the Body of Christ,”Noko said, according to Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.”The body of Christ is divided due to mathematical calculations,”he added.”But Christ’s resurrection from the dead gives us power enough to rise above human limitations.”
Three Canadian churches agree to jointly sponsor a retreat center
(RNS) In an ecumenical breakthrough in Canada, bishops of the Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican churches have signed an agreement to jointly manage a Catholic Franciscan retreat center.
Under the agreement, the three churches will jointly operate a retreat center in Lumsden, Saskatchewan, not far from the province’s capital of Regina.”We are following the World Council of Churches’ … principle which asks churches to act together in all matters except those in which deep differences of conviction compel them to act separately,”said Father Donald McDonald, provincial head of the Franciscans.
Bishop Allan Grundahl, Saskatchewan’s Lutheran bishop, said the joint operation of the center”gives all three Christian traditions a practical opportunity to work together, to pray together. It also gives us a platform to reach out to our larger society, where we welcome the opportunity to give examples of unity and cooperation.” Three Franciscans and two representatives of each of the three participating churches will constitute the new board to operate the center, reported Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.
Bishops drop support for British Roman Catholic gay group
(RNS) Quest, the British Roman Catholic organization for homosexuals, has been dropped from this year’s official Roman Catholic Directory for England and Wales because its constitution is seen as being at odds with the church teaching that gay sexual activity is always wrong.
The group has been among the Catholic organizations listed in the directory since 1992.
In the 1998 directory it describes itself as”providing support for homosexual people chiefly through local groups meeting for worship, discussion, and social activity,”adding that its purpose is”to proclaim the gospel so as to sustain and increase Christian faith among homosexual men and women.” The difficulty has arisen over its constitution, which talks of bringing together”lay men and women who are seeking ways of reconciling the full practice of their Catholic faith with the full expression of their homosexual natures in loving Christian relationships.” Following six years of dialogue between Quest officials and Cardinal Basil Hume, Archbishop of Westminster, an amendment to the constitution was put forward last July at a special meeting of the organization to make the last phrase read”loving and chaste Christian relationships.” But the group’s membership _ apparently by a small majority _ rejected the amendment.
In a letter to Charles Keal, Quest’s chairman, Hume said the single point at issue was that if an organization was listed with ecclesiastical approval,”the assumption must be that it accepts the church’s teaching set out in a manner which is in no way ambiguous.” Hume said he saw the purpose of the rejected amendment as encouraging acceptance of gays”to live chaste lives in accordance with the church’s teaching.”Its rejection has raised concern about the direction Quest is now taking.”It is one thing for the church officially to recognize a support group for Catholic homosexual men and women, struggling, as we all do, to live up to the demands of our shared Christian vocation,”Hume said in his letter. But he said it now seems clear an explicit part of Quest’s agenda is”to encourage and recognize loving same-sex partnerships”which the church cannot accept.
In response, Quest noted the offending phrase had been in its constitution since it was founded in 1973. The decision to exclude Quest from the directory”can only be seen as a hardening of the cardinal’s position towards dialogue with lesbian and gay people.”
`Prince of Egypt’ captures top Angel Award
(RNS) Dreamworks’ animated Bible movie,”The Prince of Egypt,”won the top Gold Angel Award for best film of the year at the 22nd annual International Angel Awards.
The awards, presented Feb. 25, honor entertainment promoting positive moral and social values.
Given by the Hollywood entertainment group Excellence In Media, the awards also honored the animated Disney film”Mulan”as Best Children’s Movie, while the Best Foreign Film nod went to the Oscar-nominated Italian Holocaust film,”Life Is Beautiful.” The angel-themed CBS drama,”Touched by an Angel,”won Best Inspirational Series, with star Roma Downey receiving a Special Award of Merit. Actors Craig T. Nelson of the old ABC comedy”Coach”and actor Gerald McRaney of CBS'”Promised Land,”won Lifetime Achievement Awards. McRaney told reporters that,”belief in God,”distinguishes”Promised Land,”which this year also won a Gold Angel for Best Drama Series.
Quote of the day: Buddy Witherspoon, South Carolina Republican activist
(RNS)”I am a Christian. I am a conservative. But one thing I am not is a racist.” _ Buddy Witherspoon, a member of the Republican National Committee from South Carolina, announcing he is severing his ties to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group that has been accused of being the reincarnation of the racist white Citizens Council that battled integration the 1950s and 1960s.
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