c. 2005 Religion News Service

Vatican Foreign Minister to Visit Moscow in Sign of Improving Relations

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican’s foreign minister will visit Moscow this fall in a sign of improving diplomatic relations that could also affect Catholic-Orthodox dialogue.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls announced the invitation following talks on Tuesday (June 7) between Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“The meeting confirmed the existing cordial relations and the possibility of developing them further. To that end, the minister invited Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, secretary for relations with states, to Moscow this autumn,” the spokesman said.

Lajolo will be the highest ranking Vatican official to visit the Russia capital since early 2002 when the decision of Pope John Paul II to upgrade church structure in the Russian Federation created severe tensions with both church and state.

Accusing the Vatican of seeking to convert traditionally Orthodox Russians to Catholicism, the Russian Orthodox Church suspended dialogue with the Vatican, and the government ousted a half-dozen Catholic bishops.

Relations gradually improved during the last years of John Paul’s papacy, and both Pope Benedict XVI and Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow have expressed willingness to consider closer encounters.

Because the Kremlin is careful to follow the lead of the Orthodox Church in relations with the Vatican, the invitation to Lajolo was seen as the first concrete step in this direction.

In an interview published May 30 by the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Alexy praised Benedict’s knowledge, intellect and “fearless” attempts to defend “traditional Christian values among the people who are trying to remove these values.”

“Of course, we do have theological differences. But our views are very similar: the outlook on modern society, about secularism, moral relativism, and the danger of erosion of Christian values as well as some other problems,” the patriarch said.

Alexy, however, reiterated the charge that Catholics, a small minority in Russia, are seeking Orthodox converts and said the success of dialogue would depend on Benedict’s position on this “proselytism.”

Catholics and Orthodox leaders in Russia recently established a commission to investigate specific accusations of Catholic pastoral workers and agencies using charity, education or health care to draw Orthodox away from their church.

_ Peggy Polk

Conservative Christian Groups Denounce .xxx Internet Domain

(RNS) Saying it will create an online “red light district,” conservative Christian groups are opposing the proposed creation of a new adult-oriented domain with Web addresses ending with “.xxx.”

“This idea has been kicked around for several years and the only possible winners are in the porn industry,” said Jan LaRue, chief counsel of the Washington-based Concerned Women for America, a public policy organization.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit organization that oversees the Internet addressing system, announced last week that it will allow ICM Registry Inc. to launch the voluntary adult domain “.xxx.”

The Family Research Council, a social policy group in Washington that focuses on marriage and family, echoed similar concerns of religious conservatives.

“The `.xxx’ domain … cloaks the porn industry with legitimacy,” said Patrick Trueman, FRC’s senior legal counsel. “The industry will have a place at the table in developing and maintaining their new property.”

According to ICM, the new domain “will create a clearly identifiable area of the Internet that will empower families and help protect children and others from unwanted or inappropriate content.”

But, Trueman said, a “virtual red light district” may deter law enforcement from cracking down on obscenity cases since the domain is supposed to be for adults only.

Daniel Weiss, senior analyst for media and sexuality at the Colorado-based advocacy group Focus on the Family, agreed that creating more online pornography is not the answer.

He said it was “ridiculous” that supporters of the domain believe “proliferating pornography is somehow going to protect children from pornography.”

Ten percent of all Internet searches are pornography-related and there are more than 100,000 adult webmasters and 1 million adult domains worldwide, according to the ICM Web site.

Still, proponents of “.xxx” say it’s too early to decide whether it will be a successful tool for concerned parents.

“The problem is we’re commenting before the rules have been set,” said Parry Aftab, founder of WiredSaftey, a nonprofit group that surveys the Internet for pornographic sites.

Aftab, who once opposed the “.xxx” domain, says she’s most concerned about the children who inadvertently find adult-themed sites by typing in addresses like whitehouse.com, which once led to a pornographic site, not the president’s home in Washington.

If adult-themed sites move to .xxx, which plans to provide business incentives like additional e-commerce security, then parents can easily block the entire domain, Aftab said.

ICM, the company that will approve all .xxx applicants, says that the new domain will be self-organized and self-regulated by “responsible adult-entertainment Web site operators.”

But LaRue said this is an industry that has shown little regard for protecting children from harmful images.

“Because it’s voluntary, the porn site operators have the best of both worlds,” she said.

“They can double their pleasure, double their fun by locating on this domain and remain on any of the other domains on which they’re registered.”

_ Helena Andrews

Cafe Fined for Refusing to Provide Kosher Coffee Cup to Orthodox Jew

NEW YORK (RNS) New York City’s Division of Human Rights has fined a Manhattan eatery for refusing to accommodate the dietary needs of an Orthodox Jew who did not want to drink from a nonkosher coffee cup.

According to a report in the New York Daily News, the Nations Cafe was ordered June 2 to pay Israel Steinberg, a congregational rabbi from Brooklyn, $500 for an incident dating back to 1992.

At the time, Steinberg had requested a disposable cup so as not to violate kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws. In his complaint, the rabbi said that a waiter instructed him to either use a porcelain cup or leave the establishment.

The restaurant’s porcelain dishes were not kosher.

Steinberg, a Holocaust survivor, told the Daily News that the waiter had “embarrassed and ridiculed me because I’m Jewish, in front of all the customers.”

When Steinberg told the waiter that his actions were illegal, the waiter replied “Get out, you (expletive deleted) Jew.”

In order to investigate the complaint, a staffer from the Division of Human Rights posed as an Orthodox Jew and requested a disposable cup from the restaurant. He, too, met with anti-Semitism.

The restaurant has been under different management since 2000.

_ Michele Chabin

Poll: Americans Give Most Support to Idea of Faith Shaping Politics

(RNS) Results of a recent 10-country survey show Americans were the most likely to believe religion should have a role in politics.

Thirty-seven percent of American respondents said religious leaders should “try to influence government decisions,” according to a survey for the Associated Press by Ipsos, a Washington-based independent market research company.

The poll included residents of Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea, Spain and the United States.

Higher percentages of respondents in countries outside the U.S. were opposed to the influence of religious leaders on government actions. Eighty-five percent of French respondents opposed such influence. At least 75 percent of respondents from the United Kingdom, Mexico, Spain, Germany and Australia also opposed the role of religious leaders in government affairs.

In both the United States and Mexico, 86 percent of respondents said religion plays a role in their life. In addition, 80 percent of Mexicans said they have no doubts about God’s existence, compared to 70 percent of Americans.

Respondents who were most likely to say they did not believe in God were residents of France (19 percent), South Korea (19 percent) and the United Kingdom (16 percent).

About 1,000 people in each of the 10 countries were questioned between May 12 and 26.

The polls had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

_ Heather Horiuchi

Quote of the Day: Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean

(RNS) “You know, the Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people. They’re a pretty monolithic party. Pretty much, they all behave the same, and they all look the same. … It’s pretty much a white Christian party.”

_ Howard Dean, former presidential hopeful and Vermont governor, speaking at a roundtable event Monday (June 6) with minority leaders and journalists in San Francisco. He was quoted by The San Francisco Chronicle.

MO/PH END RNS