c. 2000 Religion News Service
Soulforce to Take Protests to Vatican in January
WASHINGTON (RNS) An ecumenical gay rights group that has spent much of the year protesting church conventions and rallying for greater inclusion of gays and lesbians plans to take its demands all the way to Pope John Paul II next month.
Soulforce, a grass-roots network headed by the Rev. Mel White, a former ghostwriter for the Revs. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, led hundreds of people to be arrested in nonviolent demonstrations outside the meetings of the United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), Episcopal Church, Southern Baptist Convention and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
During the Vatican demonstration, protesters plan to hold a silent vigil outside St. Peter’s Basilica and “tape” their demands to the Vatican’s door. They could face arrest, and are in fact planning on it.
White will lead a delegation of Soulforce volunteers to Rome Jan. 5-6, 2001, in cooperation with Dignity/USA, the nation’s largest group of gay Catholics. The Roman Catholic Church does not recognize Dignity/USA and prohibits the group from receiving communion or holding Mass in Catholic churches.
During the bishops’ meeting in Washington in November, White and Dignity officials met with a delegation of bishops, but the meeting yielded no major results. More than 100 people were arrested after that meeting. Dignity and Soulforce said they will appeal their case to the pope.
Mary Louise Cervone, president of Dignity/USA, noted the timing of the demonstrations, which will fall on the feast of the Epiphany, which tradition holds is when the Magi arrived bearing gifts for the baby Jesus.
“However, 2,000 years later, the church will still not accept the gifts and talents that we bring as gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people of deep and profound faith,” Cervone said in a statement.
Marianne Duddy, Dignity/USA’s executive director, said Vatican teachings that homosexuals are “objectively disordered” and that homosexual acts are “intrinsically evil” are harmful to gay Catholics and set the tone for the larger society.
“The Vatican’s holy war against sexual minorities has far-reaching effects both inside and outside the church,” she said.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
U.S. Rabbis Call For Shared Jewish-Palestinian Temple Mount
(RNS) More than 100 U.S. rabbis said Thursday (Dec. 7) that there is no theological rationale for Jewish control of the disputed Temple Mount in Jerusalem and that both Jews and Muslims should share control of the holy site.
The statement, signed by 101 rabbis from the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist traditions, lamented the recent weeks of violence that have seen nearly 300 people _ mostly Palestinians _ killed.
“We are horrified by the shedding of blood in our Holy Land,” the rabbis said. “We are more horrified by the emergence of mob violence on both sides of the ethnic divide.”
The rabbis criticized both heavy-handed tactics by the Israeli army against Palestinians and the Palestinian mobs that have attacked Israeli soldiers. The rabbis warned both sides against inciting youth, saying, “This is a weapon over which you will ultimately have no control.”
The Temple Mount, which contains the ruins of the ancient Hebrew temple as well as two major Islamic shrines, has been the major sticking point between negotiators from both sides. Israelis do not want to surrender complete control of the site, while Palestinians want the area as part of a Palestinian-controlled independent state.
The rabbis cited the prophet Isaiah’s words that the site should be a “house of prayer for all peoples.” They said they do not want the site to be an “obstacle” to peace. “It is desecrated by shows of military force, by cries of hatred and the throwing of stones, and most of all by the shedding of blood,” the statement said.
The statement was drafted by Arthur Green, a professor of Jewish thought at Brandeis University, and Rabbi Rolando Matalon, spiritual leader of B’nei Jeshurun Synagogue in New York City. It was circulated with the help of the Jewish Peace Lobby, a Maryland-based group that tries to unite Jews and Muslims on common projects.
Green told The New York Times that there is “no reason” the site cannot be shared between the two faiths.
“The prophecy of Isaiah says the mount is meant to be a house of prayer for the whole human race, and not just the Jewish people,” Green said. “The Jewish people should therefore welcome the Muslim presence, and of course we think the Muslim authorities should also welcome the Jewish presence on the mount.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
World Marks Human Rights Day
WASHINGTON (RNS) As the world prepared to mark Human Rights Day, a new report released Thursday (Dec. 7) by an international human rights group says global institutions such as the United Nations are ill-equipped to handle the issue of human rights worldwide.
“The world doesn’t have global institutions with the muscle to adequately address the most urgent human rights issues of our time,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based group Human Rights Watch, in a statement. “We urgently need to remedy these institutional failings.”
The group’s Human Rights Watch World Report 2001, a survey of human rights developments within the past year in 70 countries, found that “a disturbing institutional void frequently leaves human rights standards unenforced,” and singled out the World Trade Organization for emphasizing global trade sometimes at the expense of international human rights norms.
“Stronger institutions are needed to insist that governments and corporations respect human rights in their global dealings,” the report said, noting that “except in extraordinary circumstances,” organizations such as the United Nations and the International Labor Organization can do little to promote human rights except “encourage treaty ratification and condemn abusive conduct.”
The report chided the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for maintaining that human rights were a “political” issue separate from economic matters, and proposed that global financial agencies demand “progressive improvement in respect for rights as part of loan packages.”
In Washington, D.C., President Clinton commemorated Human Rights Day by awarding the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi for her efforts to replace military rule in Myanmar with democracy.
Suu Kyi’s son accepted the award on behalf of his mother, who has been under house arrest in Myanmar since September.
Clinton also bestowed the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights on five U.S. citizens., including the Most Rev. Theodore E. McCarrick, newly appointed archbishop of Washington, D.C., who is an advocate for immigrants and debt relief for poor nations.
McCarrick’s fellow recipients were: civil rights attorneys Elaine R. Jones and Norman Dorsen; Frederick Charles Cuny, a humanitarian aid worker who was kidnapped and murdered in Chechnya in 1995; and Tillie Black Bear, an advocate of rights for Native Americans, women and victims of domestic violence.
_ Shelvia Dancy
Vatican Rebukes Austrian Theologian for Taking Protestant Line
VATICAN CITY (RNS) – The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has rebuked an Austrian theologian for taking a line considered too close to Protestanism.
The rebuke, reported in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Roman Tuesday (Dec. 5), following a a two-year investigation into the fundamentalist approach to theology taken by the Rev. Reinhard Mesner of the University of Innsbruck.
The congregation said that Mesner was convinced that every “authentic apostolic tradition is contained in Scripture and that, therefore, Scripture, as an indisputable norm, requires criticism of every later tradition.”
This, the congregation said, diminishes the intermediary role of the Roman Catholic Church between man and God, exposes interpretation of Scripture to the theological fashions of the moment and can even lead to doubt that Jesus instituted the Eucharist.
L’Osservatore Roman said that Mesner accepted the criticism and agreed to abide by the congregation’s teaching.
_ Peggy Polk
Thomas Nelson To Market Products For Charismatics
(RNS) Christian publishing company Thomas Nelson has announced that it will begin marketing products aimed at charismatic consumers.
More than 100 Bibles, books, videos and other merchandise will appear under the “HeartAblaze” brand name beginning next March, the company said. Items bearing the logo will be produced by Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nelson Reference and Electronic, Nelson Bibles and CaribeBetania, the Spanish division of Thomas Nelson.
“We know that more than half of those who shop in Christian bookstores are charismatic in their beliefs or are seeking a richer relationship with the Holy Spirit,” said Michael Hyatt, executive vice president and publisher of Thomas Nelson Publishers, in a statement. “My dream for HeartAblaze is that it would create a category in the stores that makes it safe _ not just for charismatic Christians, but for all consumers _ to buy books that will stimulate them in their walk with the Lord.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
Prestigious British Jesuit Journal The Month To Cease Publication
LONDON (RNS) The British Jesuit monthly The Month, founded in 1864, is to cease publication with its issue of April next year.
In a letter of explanation to readers, the editor, the Rev. Tim Noble, S.J., said the magazine is no longer viable and for many years has only been able to continue because of a “large subsidy” from the Society of Jesus.
In addition, the Jesuits are reassigning Noble and no other Jesuit is available to succeed him. Appointing a non-Jesuit editor would have meant a substantial increase in costs.
The Month is perhaps best known for having first accepted and then decided not to print Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” commemorating the death of five Franciscan nuns expelled from Germany when their ship was wrecked at the mouth of the Thames in December 1975.
The then-editor was dismayed by the poet’s use of “sprung rhythm” and adoption of techniques learned from Welsh poetry.
_ Robert Nowell
Quote of the Day: Exorcism Critic Hank Hanegraaff
(RNS) “It’s a sensational, fast-food solution to long-term problems that absolves you of any responsibility for your vices. I call it Flip Wilson theology: `The devil made me do it.”’
Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Santa Margarita, Calif.-based Christian Research Institute, criticizing exorcism ministries. He was quoted in the Dec. 7 edition of The Washington Post.
DEAEND RNS
