c. 2003 Religion News Service

Conservative Christians Hail Upholding of Anti-Porn Filters

WASHINGTON (RNS) Conservative Christian groups hailed the Supreme Court decision Monday (June 23) that upholds a law requiring public libraries to include anti-pornography filters in their computers.

In a 6-3 ruling, the justices upheld the Children’s Internet Protection Act.

“Libraries should be safe-zones of quiet and learning for children,” said Family Research Council President Ken Connor. `No filtering software is going to work 100 percent of the time, and when necessary, sites that are mistakenly blocked can be unblocked. On the other hand, it may take a lifetime to undo the damage suffered by a child exposed to an obscene image.”

The American Center for Law and Justice, which like the council filed a friend-of-the-court brief defending the law, also welcomed the decision.

“We’re delighted that the Supreme Court determined that the government does have a compelling interest to protect children from pornography on the Internet,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the ACLJ.

The American Library Association, which was concerned that the law amounted to censorship and some filters would block valuable information, stated its disappointment in the decision.

“In light of this, we expect libraries that decide they must accept filters to inform their patrons how easily the filters can be turned off,” said Judith Krug, director of the association’s intellectual freedom office.

As the high court winds down its year of decision-making, justices declined to further consider other matters of interest to religious organizations.

They rejected an appeal from a New Jersey community that wanted to bar its Orthodox Jewish leaders from marking utility poles in a religious district, the Associated Press reported.

The justices also declined to hear a debate on whether the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should be permitted to limit speech it considers offensive in a park that it bought from Salt Lake City. They let stand a lower court decision that said since the church guaranteed the city pedestrian access through the park when it purchased the land, free-speech rights along the plaza sidewalks must be retained.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Religious Groups Rally Against Minnesota Concealed Weapon Law

(RNS) Six bishops from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have voiced support for a lawsuit filed by a Minnesota Lutheran church seeking to ban concealed weapons from its property.

The lawsuit filed last month by the Edina Community Lutheran church in Edina, Minn., was brought against the state of Minnesota in an attempt to overturn a law that allows licensed citizens to carry concealed firearms into nongovernmental buildings, including churches.

The Edina church challenged the new Minnesota Citizens’ Personal Protection Act _ commonly called the “conceal and carry law”_ on constitutional grounds, saying that the law inhibits their freedom of religious expression.

“Plaintiffs sincerely believe, based on their religion, that the presence of firearms on church property, including in their church parking lot, is inconsistent with their commitment to peacemaking and nonviolence,” attorneys for the Edina church said in the lawsuit, the church’s news agency reported.

Other religious communities, including the state’s Roman Catholic bishops, the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota, a Zen Buddhist center and a number of synagogues, have also joined the suit.

Besides questioning the constitutionality of the law, religious groups are disputing the elaborate notification system they must follow to keep weapons out of their buildings.

According to the law, which went into effect on May 28, establishments wishing to ban concealed firearms must post signs at each entrance stating that concealed weapons are not allowed.

“Many times people enter a church because it is a place for sanctuary and healing,” the Rev. Jim Perry, director of ministries for the state’s United Methodist churches, told the United Methodist News Service. “The peacefulness of worship juxtaposed with the need to tell people that they can’t carry in firearms and if they have them they must leave and return only after they dispose of them is jarring.”

_ Alexandra Alter

Ground Broken for First Orthodox Church in North Korea

MOSCOW (RNS) Responding to a personal invitation from dictator Kim Jong Il, Russian Orthodox Church leaders broke ground Tuesday (June 24) for the first Orthodox church in North Korea, a country with one of the world’s worst religious freedom records.

“It was Kim Jong Il’s idea. When he was in the (Russian) Far East last year and visited one of our churches, he liked it. He said, ‘I’d like one of those, too,”’ said Valentin Radayev, a specialist on Asia in the Russian Orthodox Church’s department for external church relations.

The Church of the Holy Trinity, to be located on a river bank in eastern Pyongyang, will be finished within 12 months’ time and feature two distinctive onion domes, Radayev said.

“(North) Korea is paying,” he added. “We don’t know who exactly, but they are paying.”

According to North Korean officials, the Union of Orthodox Believers in Korea is overseeing the project, the Russian state news agency, ITAR-TASS, reported. Aside from an estimated 130 Russian citizens in Pyongyang, it is not clear what other residents might be Orthodox.

Official North Korean statistics claim the country of 22 million has 10,000 Protestants, 10,000 Buddhists, and 4,000 Catholics. The government has arrested, beaten and jailed those believers who worship or proselytize outside state-approved faiths, according to the U.S. State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report for 2002.

When the Church of the Holy Trinity is completed some time next year, it will become the fourth Christian house of worship in the North Korean capital, which has one Roman Catholic and two Protestant sanctuaries. All of them were completed between 1988 and 1990 during an easing in religious discrimination.

While traveling across Russia last August in his personal train, Kim Jong Il stopped in the Siberian city of Khabarovsk, where he spent nearly an hour visiting the St. Innokenty of Irkutsk Church.

“He questioned the priests about the history of Orthodoxy, what makes it different than Catholicism and what is the difference between Christianity and other religions,” ITAR-Tass reported at the time.

Later, Kim Jong Il proclaimed, “A Russian Orthodox parish will appear in the North Korean capital.”

Vatican Museums Offer Michelangelo Online

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican Museums went online Tuesday (June 24), making some of the world’s most important art works available for the first time to users of desktop and laptop computers, palm pilots and mobile telephones.

The new Web site, reached through the Vatican’s main Internet address of http://www.vatican.va, offers virtual visits to the Sistine Chapel and five other sections of the museums with commentary and pertinent biblical quotations in English, Italian, French, Spanish and German.

Navigators can start with a panoramic view of a hall housing paintings, frescoes and statues, then chose to look at single works of art. A built-in zoom lens provides blow-ups of details.

Cardinal Edmund Szoka, the Michigan-born prelate who is president of the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican City State, told a news conference that the Web site was designed for tourists and scholars alike.

Szoka said it is intended to make visits to the museums “easier and more understandable” for tourists, “furnish scholars with information useful for their research and diffuse among the general public the knowledge of so many masterworks, their history and their significance.”

In addition to the Sistine Chapel, famed for the Last Judgment and other frescoes by Michelangelo, the site offers tours of the Vatican’s Egyptian, Etruscan and Ethnological Missionary museums, the Rafael Rooms and Art Gallery.

Archbishop Claudio Celli, secretary of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See, said that since the Vatican first went online at Christmas 1995 with one page of greetings to Pope John Paul II, the site has grown to 200,000 pages, accessed 50 million times a month from 150 countries.

Celli, who is in charge of the Web site, said that work to put the museums online began five years ago with technical support from the Italian branch of Hewlett Packard, Societa Datamax and Edizione All Media. He said that wireless access will be available “in the immediately future” through Hot Spot WiFi.

The only remaining project for the Web is putting the Vatican Archives online and will be completed “in the near future,” Celli said.

The prelate also reported that the site’s firewall fends off more than 10,000 viruses and malicious codes each month and some 30 attacks a week by hackers, not all of them “enemies” of the Vatican. A Franciscan friar, “who apparently couldn’t sleep because of the heat” spent all night recently in an unsuccessful attempt to break into the site, he said.

Vatican administrative offices send more than 20,000 e-mails and receive some 15,000 messages daily, Celli said. He said that almost 23,000 e-mails arrived at a special address for Pope John Paul II’s 83rd birthday May 18, which meant a great deal of work for Vatican officials who “not only print them all out but answer each one.”

_ Peggy Polk

Episcopalians, Lutherans, Brethren Name Washington Directors

WASHINGTON (RNS) Three mainline Protestant churches have named new directors of their Washington offices, where they will advocate for policy on behalf of the denominations.

The Episcopal Church has tapped Maureen Shea, formerly the liaison to the religious community for President Clinton, as director of its Washington office. Shea, who most recently worked for People for the American Way, was picked from a field of 80 applicants.

“Throughout my career, I have enjoyed the opportunity of working in a bipartisan fashion,” she told Episcopal News Service. “I look forward to continuing that work with the excellent staff in Washington and to adding my voice to the respected and important witness of the faith community.”

Shea succeeds Tom Hart, who left the office in February to be the chief lobbyist for DATA, the Africa advocacy office founded by U2 singer Bono.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has named a veteran lobbyist and Capitol Hill staffer to direct its Lutheran Office of Government Affairs. Karen Vagley, who spent 25 years on two House committees, succeeds the Rev. Russell Siler, who retired in January.

Since 1995, Vagley has worked as a public policy consultant for nonprofit organizations and associations. She has also represented the National Citizens’ Coalition for Nursing Home Reform for the past year.

The Church of the Brethren has named the Rev. Phillip Jones, pastor of Peace Covenant Church of the Brethren in Durham, N.C., to serve as Director of Witness in the Washington office.

Jones has served as a church pastor in Florida, a youth minister and prison chaplain and also a dairy owner. Jones will also coordinate peace and justice issues. He replaces Greg Davidson Laszakovits, who resigned earlier this year.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Quote of the Day: Author Denise Roy of Santa Clara, Calif.

(RNS) “I was listening to an NPR (National Public Radio) program of Gregorian chants and got a flash of awareness that for me, my van was the closest thing I had to a monastery. I realized that in terms of my own spiritual practice, it is not about going somewhere to a holy place, but about being where you are right now _ in the carpool, in the commute _ awake and present in life.”

_ Denise Roy, author of “My Monastery Is My Minivan,” a memoir of spirituality and self-help. Roy, a marriage and family therapist in Santa Clara, Calif., was quoted by The Washington Post.

DEA END RNS