c. 2000 Religion News Service
Christian Singers Earn Grammys in Gospel Categories
(RNS) Christian singers Shirley Caesar, Steven Curtis Chapman and Rebecca St. James were among the winners of Grammy Awards at the annual ceremony held Wednesday (Feb. 23) in Los Angeles.
Caesar, who has been performing for four decades, garnered her 11th Grammy for her “Christmas With Shirley Caesar” album in the Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album category.
Chapman, who also is a songwriter, picked up his fourth Grammy for his “Speechless” album in the Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album category.
St. James, honored for her fourth album, was a first-time Grammy winner.
“I am genuinely surprised,” St. James said, upon accepting the honor for “Pray” in the Best Rock Gospel Album category.
The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, directed by Carol Cymbala, also was honored with its first Grammy in the Best Gospel Choir or Chorus Album category for “High & Lifted Up.”
Yolanda Adams, a contemporary gospel singer, won in the Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album category for “Mountain High … Valley Low.”
“Kennedy Center Homecoming” by Bill and Gloria Gaither and their Homecoming Friends was named the Best Southern Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album.
Oregon Report: Twenty-Seven Used Suicide Law
(RNS) Twenty-seven terminally ill people used Oregon’s 2-year-old assisted suicide law to end their lives in 1999, 11 more than the year before, according to a report by the state.
Nearly two-thirds _ 17 _ were cancer patients, according to the Oregon Health Division’s report released Wednesday (Feb. 23), while the others suffered from AIDS, chronic lung disease or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
All of those who used the state’s Death With Dignity Act had health insurance, and their median age was 71.
The study said physicians and relatives of the deceased reported those who chose physician-assisted suicide did so not because of “poverty, lack of education or health insurance” or concerns about “poor care.”
“The families also volunteered that these were patients who were determined to have control over their lives and the way they died,” Katrina Hedberg, co-author of the report and a physician who leads the Oregon Health Division, told USA Today.
The report, based on information culled from family members of the deceased and doctors involved in the cases, was published Thursday (Feb. 24) in the New England Journal of Medicine, along with two other articles and an editorial about Oregon’s assisted suicide law as well as euthanasia in the Netherlands.
Supporters of the Oregon law say the Health Division’s report bolsters their contention the law is not being misused, but critics disagree.
Dr. William Breitbart, chief of psychiatry service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said doctors might be reluctant to disclose information in instances when assisted suicides do not go well.
Another critic, Dr. Gregory Hamilton of Physicians for Compassionate Care, claimed the report is flawed.
“The OHD again asked the wrong questions of the wrong people,” said Hamilton, founder of Americans for Integrity in Palliative Care. “In surveying only doctors who assisted suicides, and family members, the report gathered information solely from those with an interest in justifying their recent contribution to or collusion in a patient’s death. No objective data were obtained. The report’s superficially reassuring conclusions are unwarranted and overreach the data.”
Austrian Church Leaders Warn Against Criticism of Government
(RNS) Austrian church leaders are warning that criticism from outsiders concerning the government’s decision to include the far-right Freedom Party in the governing coalition is only making Joerg Haider, the party’s controversial leader, more popular.
At the same time, the leaders said they welcomed a pledge of support from the Conference of European Churches.
Austria has come under severe criticism from the European Union, the United States and countries such as Israel for including Haider’s anti-immigrant party in the government. Haider, while not a member of the government, has drawn criticism for remarks he has made that have been favorable to Nazism.
“It’s vitally important that the churches aren’t cold-shouldering us, as governments are,” a spokesman for the Roman Catholic diocese of Vienna told Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency. “We must prevent the isolation of Austria and its people. But we can only do this if our friends help us.”
While some Austrian church leaders have spoken out against racism and anti-immigrant “propaganda,” they have been less vocal in criticizing Haider and the Freedom Party.
Lutheran Bishop Herwit Sturm, who co-chairs Austria’s Ecumenical Council, described the Freedom Party as “a democratic party which has come close to the edge, but hasn’t gone beyond it.”
“The EU’s harsh response is already having the opposite effect of what it intended, by making Haider the best-known Austrian in Europe,” Sturm told ENI.
Sturm also said the support for the Freedom Party was a protest against the current political situation rather than a sign of hostility to foreigners.
Pointing to the Feb. 19 demonstrations in which 150,000 people protested in Vienna against the Freedom Party’s inclusion in the government, Sturm said, “The fact that so many people are demonstrating their opposition to racism and anti-racism is also a good development.”
Basque Ecologists Stage Protest on the Dome of St. Peter’s Basilica
(RNS) Three Basque ecological activists climbed Thursday (Feb. 24) onto the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica to stage a protest against the Spanish government’s controversial plan to build a massive dam in Navarra in the Basque region of Spain.
The protesters spent about four hours roped to windows of the 16th century dome high above St. Peter’s Square, displaying orange banners with black lettering reading: “SOS Itoiz” and “No to the Dam.”
Talking to reporters over a cell phone, one protester described the dam as “the most expensive swimming pool in the world.” He said the $105 million project would submerge nine villages in the Arce and Longuida valleys and destroy three nature reserves that are home to such endangered species as the royal eagle.
The protesters said they were among 25 members of an ecological group called Solidarios con Itoiz, which has staged similar demonstrations in London, the Hague and Berlin.
They reached the dome at midday by posing as tourists with their banners and ropes hidden inside their jackets and taking an elevator to a walled-in section of the structure open to the public.
Vatican security guards and firemen convinced them in the late afternoon to let themselves be hauled up and pulled back in through the windows.
St. Peter’s Basilica is the world’s largest church.
Scientologist’s Death Ruled Accidental
(RNS) Four years after a Scientologist involved in a minor traffic accident died while in the care of fellow church members, a Florida medical examiner has declared her death accidental.
Joan Wood, a medical examiner in Pasco-Pinellas, originally classified Lisa McPherson’s death as “undetermined” but amended it Feb. 18 after studying new medical evidence, according to the Associated Press. Most of that new evidence was provided by experts hired by the church, said Wood’s attorney, Jeff Goodis.
Wood’s ruling complicates a lawsuit brought against the church by the Pasco-Pinellas State Attorney’s Office in which the church is accused of two felonies: unauthorized practice of medicine and abusing a disabled adult. Prosecutors must decide whether to continue the case, change the charges or drop them altogether.
“We need to review (Wood’s decision),” said chief assistant prosecutor Doug Crow. “I wouldn’t want to speculate about what effect it may have.”
McPherson died at the age of 36 while in the care of church officials in December 1995. Church members _ fearing McPherson would undergo psychiatric treatment, which violates church principles _ had checked her out of a hospital to which she had been taken by police after a minor traffic accident. For more than two weeks McPherson was kept in the custody of church members. Eventually they took her to a second hospital, where she was declared dead.
In the first autopsy report filed in 1996, Wood attributed McPherson’s death to a blood clot in her lungs brought on by bed rest and severe dehydration. But dehydration and bed rest are not mentioned in the latest report, which contends psychosis and the auto accident contributed to McPherson’s death.
The Associated Press reported that Sandy Weinberg, an attorney for the church, predicted the criminal charges stemming from McPherson’s death would be dismissed, either by prosecutors or a judge.
Quote of the Day: The Rev. James Lawson, civil rights veteran
(RNS) “Gay and lesbian Americans face an even more difficult struggle than we African-Americans faced. We had our families and our churches to support us. They have neither.”
The Rev. James Lawson, a civil rights veteran and pastor emeritus of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, in a statement about how justice for homosexuals is “the next civil rights frontier.”
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