c. 2000 Religion News Service

Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Gets New Name

(RNS) Delegates to a worldwide meeting of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints voted Friday (April 7) to change the church’s name to Community of Christ.

The change, which was approved by a vote of 1,979 in favor to 561 opposed,will begin sometime after Jan. 1, 2001.

Discussions about changing the name have gone on for years.

In a statement announcing the change, the church said its 1994 Joint Council decided the “Community of Christ” name was consistent with the church’s theology and mission.

“It honors church heritage while offering a positive image for what the church is called to be in the future,” the statement reads.

The new name failed to win approval at two earlier worldwide meetings of the church, in 1996 and 1998. Even now that the new name has been approved, the name “Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints” will be retained for some legal purposes.

Members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints trace their beginnings to the start of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830. Members of the “reorganized” body began their own church in 1860 under the leadership of Joseph Smith III, the son of the founder of the Mormon church.

Seventh-day Adventist Group Gives Women Pastors Equal Credentials

(RNS) The president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church has voiced his “regret” that the church’s Southeastern California Conference has decided to issue the same credentials to male and female pastors.

The executive committee of the conference made the move March 16. F. Lynn Mallery, president of the conference, said the decision reflected the need to treat “women ministers without discrimination.”

Mallery said the committee respected the various views on the matter, but hoped “our fellow believers will also respect our moral conviction that men and women in this conference who are equally qualified and have had fruitful ministries should be treated in the same way.”

Pastor Jan Paulsen, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, said the decision by the Southeast California Conference makes a unified position more difficult on the matter of male and female clergy.

“The issue is not the rightness or otherwise, ethically, morally or biblically, of the position that there should be no difference between them,” Paulsen said. “My regret is that the SECC could not, out of deference to the larger international family of Seventh-day Adventists, have held in check their exercise of `freedom,’ knowing that the church makes her decisions sometimes frustratingly slowly, but in a very deliberate manner with an eye to many issues.

“Moving together until we have agreed to give room to differ on specific issues is the price we pay for unity.”

The Adventist Church traditionally has a two-tier credentialing system for men and women, reported Adventist Press Service. The church recognizes males in gospel ministry as “ordained” and females as “commissioned.” Commissioned ministers are prohibited from organizing churches, ordaining deacons and elders and serving as conference president.

Nearly 10 percent of pastors in the 60,000-member Southeastern California Conference are women. The conference serves five counties south and east of Los Angeles.

Pat Robertson Declares Support for Capital Punishment Moratorium

(RNS) Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson has added his support to a nationwide moratorium on capital punishment.

Robertson stated his position in answer to a question from the audience at a symposium Friday (April 7) at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

“I think a moratorium would indeed be very appropriate,” Robertson said at the meeting on religion and capital punishment.

He said that the death penalty is administered in a way that discriminates against poor people and minorities who cannot afford expensive lawyers, The Washington Post reported.

The position of Robertson, president of the Christian Coalition, puts him in agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union, a group he usually opposes. On the same day as Robertson’s speech, the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia released a study calling for a moratorium on the death penalty in Virginia.

“The movement for a moratorium is building and it will take a large coalition of many different groups to get it through,” said Kent Willis, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia. “The ACLU and Pat Robertson often disagree. But this time, we’re both on the right side.”

During his speech, Robertson said he favored the death penatly, noting that the Bible mentions cases where it is appropriate.

“God is merciful, but God is also just,” he said, but he added “we must temper justice with mercy.”

Robertson voiced opposition to capital penalty in the individual case of Karla Faye Tucker, who became a born-again Christian on death row. He had argued that she had become a different person and her execution was no longer just. Tucker was executed in Texas in 1998.

Others have recently considered moratoriums. Illinois Gov. George Ryan, a Republican, has stopped executions in his state until a study is completed on the fairness of capital punishment in Illinois.

Moratoriums on the death penalty are being considered in Alabama, Maryland, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Washington state.

Pope beatifies Francis Seelos, four others

(RNS) Pope John Paul II has beatified a Bavarian-born priest who ministered to immigrants on the East Coast of the United States during the 19th century.

The Rev. Francis Xavier Seelos, a member of the Redemptorist order, was one of five candidates for sainthood _ two priests and three nuns _ whom the pope proclaimed blessed during a special Jubilee Holy Year Mass on Sunday (April 9) in St. Peter’s Square.

John Paul has now beatified a record 1,791 people during his more than 21 years as Roman Catholic pontiff. Beatification is the last step before sainthood.

Seelos worked as a missionary for 23 years among German and Irish immigrants in Baltimore, Cumberland and Annapolis, Md., Pittsburgh, Detroit and New Orleans where he died in 1867 at the age of 48 in a yellow fever epidemic.

The other new blesseds are:

_ Anna Rosa Battorno, who founded the Daughters of St. Anna in 1866 to work among young people in the northern Italian city of Piacenza.

_ Mariam Thresia Mankidiyan, who founded the Congregation of the Holy Family in 1914 to work among the poor in India and is considered a precursor of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

_ Mary Elizabeth Hesselbad, who was born a Lutheran in Sweden, became a Catholic while working as a nurse in New York, reconstituted the Order of St. Bridget in 1911 and became a pioneer of ecumenism.

_ The Rev. Mariano di Gesu, a Colombian priest.

Some 40,000 pilgrims gathered on a cool, gray morning for the Mass, which the pope concelebrated with 39 prelates, including Cardinals Dionigi Tettamanzi of Genoa and Camillo Ruini of Rome.

Cardinal Law Urges Action to End Sudan Violence

(RNS) Urging the United States to “bring additional pressure on the Sudanese government and opposition groups to make a good faith effort to end the war,” Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston has issued an appeal to the international community to renew efforts to peacefully resolve the longstanding civil war in Sudan.

“The end of the war would not resolve all of Sudan’s problems, but it would make it possible to address some of the most egregious suffering of the people of the Sudan _ hunger, millions of displaced, economic underdevelopment, and slavery,” said Law, chairman of the U.S. Catholic Conference International Policy Committee.

Law urged the United States to support the off-and-on, seven-year-old peace negotiations sponsored by the East African Intergovernmental Authority on Development, which has campaigned for a solution to the fighting between the Sudanese government and autonomy-seeking rebels in the south since 1983. The latest peace talks between Khartoum and southern rebels ended Friday (April 7) in Kenya with no resolution yet found.

Law said humanitarian assistance should be a top priority in Sudan, and suggested profits from a controversial new Sudanese oil pipeline could be given to the people of southern Sudan and others affected by the war to help alleviate suffering.

“Food aid and other humanitarian and development assistance must be an urgent priority,” said Law.

“The violence and repression in Sudan cannot, indeed, must not continue,” he said. “The people of Sudan yearn for a just peace. They cry for an end to the enslavement of their women and children. They yearn to be free from indiscriminate violence and the constant threat of famineâÂ?¦.It is long past time for the international community to overcome its indifference toward the humanitarian nightmare in Sudan.”

Unity Plan for Scottish Churches Presented

(RNS) Plans for a new church which would be episcopally led and synodically governed will be put before the Church of Scotland, the Scottish Episcopal Church, the United Reformed Church in Scotland, and Scottish Methodists for a second round of talks before a definite plan for union is drawn up for Scotland’s major Protestant denomination.

A first interim report from the Scottish Churches Initiative for Union was presented to the four churches in 1998, and this new report incorporates the result of discussions on the first draft.

At its meeting in Edinburgh in May the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland’s general assembly will be asked to send the new plan to presbyteries for study and response, and similar requests will be made of the governing bodies of the other churches involved when they meet.

The aim of these unity negotiations is to square the circle and combine in a united Church both the Presbyterian _ non-hierarchical _ and episcopal traditions that came into bloody conflict in 17th century Scotland.

In the new plan, elders, a Presbyterian term, are viewed as playing a key role in any future united church, as are bishops, who would be placed within the framework of regional councils.

The future church’s structures would comprise “maxi-parishes,” uniting “worship centers,” that is existing congregations, within a particular town or district; regions, which would correspond roughly to existing presbyteries or dioceses, and a national council which would meet annually.

The structures would be democratic, or non-hierarchical, and the right of a congregation to call a minister would be upheld.

“In none of the participating churches is a minister foisted on a congregation against its will,” the report notes.

Quote of the day: Francis Carlin of Catholic Relief Services

(RNS) “Foreign aid is more than an optional form of largesse. It is a fundamental obligation of solidarity on the part of those who enjoy a plentiful share of earth’s riches to promote sustainable development for those who have barely enough to survive.”

_ Francis Carlin, deputy executive director of Catholic Relief Services in testimony April 4 on behalf of CRS and the U.S. Catholic Conference before a House Appropriations subcommittee.

DEA END RNS