c. 2005 Religion News Service
Colorado Senator, Focus on the Family in Verbal Fight
(RNS) A Colorado senator has apologized for comparing Focus on the Family, a prominent conservative Christian ministry in his state, to the Antichrist.
Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., said he still thinks the ministry founded by James Dobson, is involved in un-Christian behavior after it targeted him in recent advertisements, reported The Gazette, a Colorado Springs newspaper.
“After being relentlessly attacked in telephone calls, e-mails, newspapers and radio stations all across Colorado, having my faith questioned, and having my wife’s business picketed as part of these attacks, I spoke about Jim Dobson … and his efforts and used the term `the Antichrist,”’ said Salazar in a Wednesday (April 27) statement.
“I regret having used that term. I meant to say this approach was un-Christian, meaning self-serving and selfish.”
Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family’s vice president of government and public policy, said the ministry questions how Salazar is representing Coloradans.
“He’s using overheated rhetoric to draw attention away from his broken campaign promises,” Minnery said in a Wednesday statement. “He told the voters of Colorado, when he was trying to win their votes, that he supported up-or-down votes for judicial nominees; now, he’s backing his party’s filibusters.”
Focus officials said the protest at Salazar’s family’s Dairy Queen was organized by a Denver church, not their ministry.
Polish Priest Accused of Spying on Pope John Paul II
(RNS) The head of the Polish office in charge of Cold War secret service archives has accused a Dominican priest of spying on the Polish pope in the 1980s.
Leon Kieres, president of the National Institute of Memory, said in Warsaw Wednesday (April 27) that a 700-page Cold War era dossier on the Rev. Konrad Hejmo showed the priest had given information to the Communist secret services.
Hejmo headed the pastoral center Corda Cordi from 1979-1984 at the start of John Paul’s papacy. The office helped to arrange papal audiences for Polish pilgrims in Rome.
“Documents in our archives prove that Father Konrad Stanislaw Hejmo was a collaborator of the secret security services of the Popular Republic of Poland in the 1980s and under the pseudonyms Hejnal and Dominik informed on Karol Wojtyla (the pope),” Kieres said.
“That is completely absurd,” Hejmo told Polish television by telephone from Rome. Hejmo, 69, indicated that any information that he may have supplied to Communist agents was inadvertent. “There were many wandering around Rome looking for news, some of whom I knew and can name,” he said.
In Krakow, where John Paul served as archbishop before he was elected pope in 1978, the former rector of the Pontifical Theological Academy came to Hejmo’s defense. Monsignor Tadeusz Pieronek said he couldn’t understand the charge.
“He used to tell everything he knew in public,” Pieronek said.
Andrezej Paczkowski, another official of the National Institute of Memory, said that the priest was never described as a “spy” in the dossier bur rather as an “operative contact,” or source of information.
_ Peggy Polk
American Indian Church Leader Wants His Peyote Returned
(RNS) An American Indian church leader in Utah who had thousands of peyote buttons seized by county officials has filed a federal law suit Wednesday (April 27) to get his peyote back.
James “Flaming Eagle” Mooney of the Oklevueha Earthwalks Native American Church in Benjamin, Utah, claims Utah County officials violated his civil rights by illegally searching his six-acre property and seizing thousands of peyote buttons.
Mooney was charged in 2000 with giving the hallucinogenic cactus to members of his church who were not of American Indian ethnicity.
The Utah Supreme Court ruled last June that people of other ethnicities _ like Mooney, who is part American Indian _ are also allowed to use peyote in American Indian church rituals under a federal religious freedom law.
“It’s a chilling effect to people’s right to assembly and practice religion,” Randall Marshall, Mooney’s attorney, told The Associated Press. “This is ultimately about religious freedom.”
Mooney wants the county to return an estimated 18,000 peyote buttons he says they took in an October 2000 search. He told The Associated Press the peyote is valued at about $350 per 1,000 buttons. He is also seeking monetary damages and attorney’s fees.
County officials have said they only seized 12,000 buttons, The Associated Press reported.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed April 19 to hear another case concerning use of a hallucinogenic substance in religious rituals.
The Bush administration is seeking to stop a New Mexico Christian group, “O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal,” from drinking Brazilian hoasca tea during religious ceremonies.
In November 2004, the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals found, under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the government could not intervene to prohibit the Brazil-based group’s approximately 130 members in the U.S. from using the tea.
The U.S. government is seeking to have the ruling overturned on the grounds that importing the tea from Brazil amounts to narcotics trafficking.
_ Celeste Kennel-Shank
Canada’s Anglican Bishops Agree to Moratorium on Gay Unions
WINDSOR, Ontario (RNS) Canada’s Anglican bishops have unanimously agreed to a moratorium on future church blessings of same-sex relationships, a decision that gives the church two years to study the issue.
Meeting here April 25-27, the bishops agreed “neither to encourage nor to initiate the use of such rites until General Synod (the church’s highest governing body) has made a decision on the matter.” The next General Synod is scheduled for 2007.
However, the bishops said they affirmed “the place of gay and lesbian persons in our church and give thanks for their contribution to its life and witness.”
The bishops also reluctantly agreed to honor a request from Anglican church leaders that the U.S. and Canadian churches “voluntarily withdraw” their members from a global steering body that helps set policy for the Anglican Communion.
Archbishop Andrew Hutchison, the church’s primate, on Wednesday said the moratorium would need the approval of the church’s Council of General Synod, a smaller version of a General Synod but with similar powers, when it meets outside Toronto May 6-8.
Two Canadian dioceses have voted to approve blessings for same-sex couples. Last November, the Niagara diocese voted 213-106 in favor, but Bishop Ralph Spence withheld his required endorsement for the measure to take effect.
Bishop Michael Ingham approved same-sex blessings in the British Columbia diocese of New Westminster in 2002, causing an international uproar.
Last spring, the national church affirmed the “integrity and sanctity” of same-sex relationships but stopped short of authorizing blessing ceremonies for gay couples.
The Canadian bishops, representing the 30 dioceses of the church in Canada, acknowledged that some decisions in individual Canadian dioceses have caused “distress.”
The leader of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, thanked the Canadian bishops for their “courteous” response. “Their constructive approach provides a positive basis for further engagement with the questions facing our Communion,” he said in a statement.
_ Ron Csillag
Moore’s Ten Commandments Monument Finds a Home in Alabama Church Foyer
(RNS) The 5,280-pound granite Ten Commandments monument that cost Roy Moore his job as Alabama’s chief justice will find a permanent home on Friday (April 29) at his church in Gadsden, Ala.
The monument will end its nationwide tour and will be installed in the foyer of CrossPoint Community Church, said associate pastor Bruce Word. Moore is expected to speak at the dedication ceremony.
Moore installed the monument in the rotunda of the state judicial building after being sworn in as state chief justice in 2000. A federal judge ordered it removed in 2003 and Moore was removed from office for defying the order.
Mel Glenn, the executive director of the Foundation for Moral Law, said the monument is being located at the church for preservation and safekeeping. The installation coincides with the opening of the new location of Coosa Christian School on the church grounds, Glenn added.
The church is also expected to dedicate a new 1,200-seat sanctuary Sunday.
Word said the church will be home to the monument for the foreseeable future.
The Texas-based American Veterans in Domestic Defense had taken the monument on a national tour that made 164 stops in 21 states after signing an agreement with Moore in July.
_ Jeremy Gray
Quote of the Day: Former Vice President Al Gore
(RNS) “This aggressive new strain of right-wing zealotry is actually a throwback to the intolerance that led to the creation of America in the first place.”
_ Former Vice President Al Gore, speaking at a meeting Wednesday (April 27) sponsored by the liberal organization MoveOn’s political action committee. He was referring to conservative Christian efforts to influence the judicial process.
KRE/JL END RNS
