c. 2000 Religion News Service

`Singapore Bishops’ Cause Friction in Episcopal Church

(RNS) A turf battle is brewing between two dissident Anglican bishops and the Episcopal bishops of Eastern Carolina and Southwestern Virginia who say the work of the Anglican bishops is “a direct assault on the polity and integrity of the Episcopal Church.”

Bishops Charles H. Murphy III and John H. Rogers were ordained by the Anglican archbishops of Rwanda and South East Asia in a Singapore ceremony on Jan. 29. The two bishops were sent back to the United States to serve as bishops for churches who felt they could no longer remain in the Episcopal Church. Those dissident congregations have sought Anglican oversight.

U.S. church leaders were joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury in decrying the ordinations. The Most Rev. Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, said he was “appalled” that foreign archbishops would ordain bishops who would serve in the United States.

Murphy and Rogers have said they will oversee conservative congregations that can no longer remain Episcopal because of a “crisis” in the liberal-leaning U.S. church.

Bishop Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda and Bishop Moses Tay of South East Asia have said the two bishops would be part of the “Anglican Mission in America.” In a meeting in Amsterdam July 27-29, Kolini and Tay said the two bishops could proceed with their work in the United States.

“Our mission is not negotiable. Our mission is to grow,” the bishops said, according to a press release.

At the same time, the bishops of East Carolina and Southwestern Virginia wrote a letter to Kolini, telling him that Murphy had no right to conduct ministry in their dioceses without their consent.

“If Charles Murphy came into our dioceses under your supervision, this is a direct assault on the polity and integrity of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America and the Anglican Communion,” wrote Bishops Clifton Daniel and Neff Powell. “We therefore implore you in the name of Christ to bring him under godly discipline and inhibit him from further actions in our and other dioceses of the Episcopal Church.”

Religious Groups Criticize French Sect Proposal

(RNS) Three international religious organizations _ Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Advocates International and the World Evangelical Fellowship _ have told a United Nations panel in Geneva that a French legislative proposal to regulate religious sects is a threat to religious liberty.

“Without the freedom to speak and the related freedom to hear ideas there can be no true freedom of belief as protected under international law,” a WEF spokeswoman told a UNESCO subcommission earlier this month. “The bill threatens to undermine these rights and to set an unsuitable precedent in the region.”

In June, the French National Assembly passed a bill declaring “mental manipulation” a criminal offense, and authorizing courts to disband groups identified as sects. A report released in February by the group that proposed the bill, the Interministerial Mission for the Fight Against Sects, included Scientology and the Unification Church among some 200 groups labeled as sects.

The bill “paves the way for serious abuses of freedom,” the WEF spokeswoman said, and has language so vague it “appears to seriously infringe upon the freedom of speech, including speech intended to persuade another person to a particular point of view, whether philosophical, political or religious.”

WEF said criminal activity _ “religious, political or otherwise” _ should be prosecuted, but insisted the French government give minority religious groups the same legal protection afforded majority religions.

“We are not advocating protection for groups that cloak illegal activities under the guise of religious freedom,” she said. “Time-tested legal methods have protected society from criminal elements in the past and safeguarded minorities that may not be popular but are otherwise law-abiding. These are the tools that should be resorted to rather than blacklisting groups or conducting extra-judicial investigations.”

Followers of Excommunicated Bishop Enter St. Peter’s Holy Door

(RNS) The Vatican has made no move to curtail a Holy Year pilgrimage to Rome by some 6,000 followers of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the French traditionalist excommunicated by Pope John Paul II.

Singing in Latin, the members of the Fraternity of St. Pius X marched the length of the wide avenue leading to St. Peter’s Square Tuesday (Aug. 8), entered St. Peter’s Basilica through the Holy Door and walked in procession down the nave to the towering main altar where they recited the rosary in Latin for about an hour. They did not try to celebrate Mass.

Vatican police and the honor guard at the Holy Door stood by in silence as the long procession of pilgrims filed past. Officials of the Vatican’s Holy Year committee said they were aware that the group was coming.

The Vatican did not comment officially on the arrival of members of the ultra-conservative, Swiss-based Fraternity of St. Pius X, but Vatican officials said pilgrims need no special authorization to visit churches dedicated to Holy Year observances.

“They will not be the only sinners to have crossed the Holy Door,” the Italian news agency ANSA quoted one Vatican source as saying. “For what reason should we intervene and impede their passage through the Holy Door?”

“Our pilgrimage is meant to be public testimony to our attachment to the Roman church,” the Rev. Arnaud Selegny, secretary general of the Fraternity of St. Pius X, told the Italian news agency AGI.

The pope declared the fraternity schismatic and excommunicated Lefebvre in 1988 when he went ahead with the ordination of four bishops in defiance of the Vatican. Pope Paul VI had suspended Lefebvre from his priestly duties.

Strongly opposed to the reforms enacted by the Second Vatican Council between 1962 and 1965, Lefebvre and his followers rejected all forms of ecumenical and interfaith dialogue and refused to celebrate Mass in the venacular.

In a move to accommodate Lefebvre and others who clung to the traditional Latin Mass, John Paul in 1984 authorized continued celebration of the so-called Tridentine Mass under some circumstances, but Lefebvre remained adamant until his death March 25, 1991, at the age of 85.

The pilgrims entered St. Peter’s walking two-by-two, led by four bishops from Switzerland, France, Spain and Argentina and hundreds of priests, nuns and seminarians, all in long black cassocks and habits. The first bishop in line carried a simple wooden cross.

Advocacy Groups Hail Significant Drop in Teen Birth Rate

(RNS) Teen births have dropped to the lowest rate in at least six decades, the National Center for Health Statistics reports.

Various organizations _ from religious groups urging abstinence to advocates for contraceptives and sex education in schools _ take credit for the decrease. But analysts from a range of perspectives agreed Tuesday (Aug. 8) that teens are more scared than ever of contracting sexually transmitted diseases and they also are delaying the start of their families to take jobs in the robust economy.

The statistics center, a division of the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported that for every 1,000 girls ages 15 to 19, there were 49.6 births in 1999. That was the lowest level since the statistic was first recorded 60 years ago, the Associated Press reported.

The teen birth rate has dropped consistently through the 1990s and fell 20 percent in the decade.

“Teen-agers frankly are more conservative sexually,” said Bill Albert, spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. “They realize that the risks in the 1990s were quite a bit different than the risks their parents took in the ’60s and ’70s.”

President Clinton said he was “encouraged” by the new statistics.

“This new information confirms that we continue to make impressive strides in addressing one of the most important social problems facing our nation,” Clinton said in a statement. “These encouraging trends cut across both younger and older teens, married and unmarried teens, all states, and all racial and ethnic groups.”

Analysts said ad campaigns, community awareness efforts and seeing friends have children inspired teens to be more careful or to practice abstinence, the AP reported.

“`In the past, abstinence was a joke,” said Bronwyn Mayden, executive director of Campaign for Our Children, which promotes abstinence. “It’s not a joke _ it’s OK. Kids are really concerned about catching STDs.”

Demographers for the government credited organizations encouraging abstinence along with others _ churches, parents and sex-education programs in schools.

Peter Brandt, an issue response director for Focus on the Family, an evangelical Christian ministry based in Colorado, said increased abstinence is the clear reason for the falling birth rate. He said the notion that contraceptives should get credit comes from people who “play little tricks with the data.”

Palestinian Official Briefs Vatican on Peace Talks

(RNS) A representative of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) briefed the Vatican’s foreign secretary Wednesday (Aug. 9) on the “positive aspects” of the Camp David peace talks and the “obstacles” to agreement, the Vatican reported.

Nabil Shaath, the PNA’s minister for international cooperation, met at the Vatican with Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran 10 days after a similar visit from U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

The Rev. Ciro Benedettini, assistant Vatican spokesman, said Shaah gave the “Palestinian evaluation” of the two weeks of talks, which broke off July 25 in stalemate over the status of Jerusalem, which both Jews and Palestinians claim for their capital.

Benedettini said Shaah reported at length on “the positive aspects of the dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis as well as the obstacles that did not permit the meeting to arrive at a happy conclusion.”

“Tauran confirmed the Holy See’s support for the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people,” the spokesman said. “He moreover reaffirmed the importance that the Apostolic See attaches to the holy places of the three great religions in the Holy Land.”

The prelate reiterated the Vatican’s call for international guarantees to preserve “in every circumstance the unique and sacred character” of the places holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims, the spokesman said.

In an accord signed Feb. 15 on relations between the Vatican and a future Palestinian state, the PNA agreed to “a special, internationally guaranteed statute” for Jerusalem to safeguard “the freedom of religion and conscience of all, the equality before the law of the three monotheistic religions and the sacred role of the city.”

Tauran said last week that the Vatican sought international guarantees only for the holy places rather than wanting to internationalize the city as a whole.

Israel annexed Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and claims the city as its “undivided and eternal capital.” PNA leader Yasser Arafat seeks to make East Jerusalem the capital of the independent Palestinian state he has said he will declare on Sept. 13.

Amnesty International Targets Child Soldiers

(RNS) In a letter denouncing military recruitment of children younger than 18 years old, Amnesty International charged an opposition group in Nepal with including children as young as 14 in its military, and appealed to two of the group’s leaders to end the practice.

“Evidence is mounting that children as young as 14, including girls, are being recruited by members of the armed opposition group, the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) (Maoist),” the London-based human rights group wrote in letters addressed to opposition leaders Pushpa Kumar Dahal and Baburam Bhattarai, Reuters news agency reported.

The London-based group claimed that within the past several weeks at least 30 children have been kidnapped by the opposition group, which has been fighting Nepal’s Hindu government since 1996 for an independent communist republic. More than 1,000 people have died in the conflict.

In its letter, Amnesty International also requested that the group treat any captives humanely. No members of the group have responded to the letter, which was delivered to them in June, Amnesty International reported.

Pope Asks Prayers for the Moluccas, Moscow, Spain

(RNS) Pope John Paul II called Wednesday (Aug. 9) for prayers for the end of clashes between Christians and Muslims in the Moluccas and expressed “deep disgust” over renew terrorist attacks in Moscow and in Spain.

“I wish with all my heart for an end to every form of violence, which sows mourning and pain, and that people may turn toward thoughts of understanding and peaceful coexistence,” John Paul said.

The 80-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff addressed some 20,000 pilgrims attending his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square. Many of them were young people in Rome for next week’s World Youth Day celebrations.

“Yet again I feel the need to ask you to pray for an end to the violence that is shaking the Moluccan archipelago in Indonesia,” the pope said. It was the third time this summer that he has appealed for peace in the islands hit by bloody fighting between Christians and the predominantly Muslim population.

“I would like to offer a thought of intense spiritual closeness to the many suffering the death of loved ones, deprivation of basic needs for survival and destruction of their places of worship,” the pope said. “Many of them have been forced to leave the land where they lived and in which they had the right to live in dignity and security.”

The pope said he deplored the explosion of a bomb Tuesday (Aug. 8) in a pedestrian underpass near the Kremlin in Moscow in which at least seven people were killed and 93 seriously wounded.

“I cannot fail to express my deep disgust over this serious attack while I ensure my solidarity accompanied by prayers,” John Paul said.

The pope said he extended “equal sentiments” to the victims of continuing bombings and assassinations in Spain, blamed on ETA Basque separatists.

Quote of the Day: Vice presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman

(RNS) “I ask you to allow me to let the spirit move me, as it does, to remember the words from Chronicles, which are to give thanks to God … and declare his name and make his acts known to the people; to be glad of spirit; to sing to God and make music to God; and most of all, to give glory and gratitude to God from whom all blessings truly do flow.”

_ Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew picked to be the vice presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket, speaking in Nashville, Tenn., at a Gore-Lieberman rally on Tuesday (Aug. 8).

KRE END