Monthly Archives: January 1999
NEWS FEATURE: Book raises questions about Pope Pius XII’s wartime role
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1999
c. 1999 Religion News Services UNDATED _ In the two decades since his coronation, Pope John Paul II has ushered in an unprecedented thaw in relations between Catholics and Jews _ a nearly unbelievable mend, given the centuries of ugly and sometimes murderous behavior by the majority faith. The first pope to visit a synagogue […]
RNS Daily Digest
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1999
c. 1999 Religion News Service TenPoint is CQ in item on black clergy Southern Baptist president predicts eventual division (RNS) Southern Baptist Convention President Paige Patterson has predicted that some kind of division is in the offing for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, but he expects less than a tenth of SBC churches will actually […]
NEWS STORY: Pope visits site of the Annunciation, Gethsemane, holds ecumenical meeting
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1999
c. 2000 Religion News Service JERUSALEM, March 25 (RNS) – Pope John Paul II took his spiritual pilgrimage Saturday (March 25) to Nazareth to celebrate the Annunciation of Jesus’ birth and to the garden of Gethsemane to mourn his betrayal. Later, he appealed to leaders of other Christian churches to end “scandalous squabbling over holy […]
NEWS STORY: Pope Makes it Official: Egan Will Succeed O’Connor
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1999
c. 2000 Religion News Service NEW YORK _ Pope John Paul II made official Thursday (May 11) what has been speculation for the past week _ Bishop Edward Egan of Bridgeport, Conn., a scholar, linguist and accomplished pianist, will succeed the late Cardinal John J. O’Connor as head of the Archdiocese of New York. Egan, […]
NEWS STORY: Church bells, drums to mark millennium in Canada
By Douglas Todd — January 1, 1999
c. 1999 Religion News Service VANCOUVER, British Columbia _ A sound wave of church bells will begin on the Atlantic coast at noon on Jan. 1, 2000, and roll across Canada’s time zones to conclude with a crescendo of Haida drumming on the Pacific Coast. The cross-country “joyful noise” is one of the special ways […]
NEWS FEATURE: A Contemporary Craftsman Renews an Ancient Art
By Shelvia Dancy — January 1, 1999
c. 2000 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ Alexander Sokolov was 17 years-old when he stumbled upon a crossroads for his love of art and Orthodox Christianity, his newly adopted religion: painting religious icons. “When I first started making them, they were for me an image of another world, a spiritually rich world,” said Sokolov. “When […]
NEWS STORY: Physicist Freeman Dyson Named Templeton Prize Winner
By Bart Worden — January 1, 1999
c. 2000 Religion News Service NEW YORK _ Freeman Dyson, a world-renowned physicist and author who for more than 50 years has worked to make science a tool for social justice, on Wednesday (March 22) was awarded the 2000 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. Dyson, 76, a professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced […]
NEWS STORY: Pope’s Apology for Past Errors Greeted with Applause, Perplexity
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1999
c. 2000 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II’s unprecedented public apology for sins committed in the name of the Roman Catholic Church over the past two millenniums was greeted Monday (March 13) with applause and with perplexity. “To recognize the deviations of the past serves to reawaken our consciences to the […]
NEWS STORY: Did Bishops Muddy Water on Unions and Catholic Healthcare?
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1999
c. 2000 Religion News Service ST. LOUIS _ A panel of experts on Roman Catholic healthcare issues say the U.S.Catholiuc Conference _ the social action arm of the U.S. bishops _ say the bishops may have muddied the waters with a recent statment on the relationship of unions and the church’s healthcare system. “The impression […]
NEWS FEATURE: Marketers Discover It’s Kosher _ and Profitable _ to Sell Matzo to the Masses
By Stephanie Simon — January 1, 1999
c. 2000 Religion News Service JERSEY CITY, N.J. _ The shop steward at the Manischewitz plant in Jersey City, N.J., has been on the job 67 years. The ovens were made in 1932. The matzo recipe is more than 5,000 years old. The strategy, however, is new. As they say in Yiddish, so nu? What’s […]
NEWS STORY: Religious Leaders Join Rock Star to Urge Debt Relief for Poor Nations
By Shelvia Dancy — January 1, 1999
c. 2000 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ A day after one of the world’s major global lending institutions promised to speed up debt relief for the world’s poorest nations,religious leaders, politicians and rock musician Bono gathered at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday (Sept. 21) to urge Congress to do the same. “Congress now holds the […]
NEWS FEATURE: New Bibles Reclaiming Heritage of African Biblical Characters
By Shelvia Dancy — January 1, 1999
c. 2000 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Biblical characters are a familiar part of the lexicon of American pop culture, surfacing in everything from catch phrases (“What Would Jesus Do”) to animation (Moses in DreamWorks’ “The Prince of Egypt”) to band names (Jesus Jones). Less well known are some other characters from the Bible. African characters. […]
NEWS STORY: Pope will lead unprecedented “Day of Pardon’’ for past faults
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1999
c. 2000 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II will mark the beginning of the Lenten season in the Jubilee year 2000 on Sunday by personally asking pardon for the sins committed by Roman Catholics over the past two millenniums, the Vatican said Tuesday (March 7). The Rev. Georges Cottier, a leading […]
NEWS FEATURE: Study into Religious Melancholy Turns Into an Adventure
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1999
c. 2000 Religion News Service HARTFORD, Conn. _ Julius Rubin is joyful these days, a welcome change for a sociologist whose research into “religious melancholy” led to some depressing consequences. He has had to endure a federal lawsuit, threatened legal action against his English publisher and harrassing telephone calls from persons known and unknown _ […]
NEWS STORY: `Pennies a Day’ Could Sharply Cut Hunger in America
By Shelvia Dancy — January 1, 1999
c. 2000 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ One in 10 U.S. households cannot afford food, and in the last 50 years more people around the world have died of hunger and poor sanitation than were killed in all the wars of the 20th century, according to a new report issued by Bread for the World […]
