c. 2005 Religion News Service
FEMA Extends Faith-Based Initiative With Hurricane Reimbursements
(RNS) The Federal Emergency Management Agency intends to reimburse religious groups that have offered relief to victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, marking a new step in the White House’s faith-based initiative.
The move by FEMA is being criticized by a church-state watchdog group, while a scholar of the faith-based initiative says it should not cause constitutional alarm.
Butch Kinerney, a spokesman for FEMA, said the government will reimburse sheltering expenses of private nonprofit organizations if they made an agreement with county or state government officials to house evacuees.
“We want to make sure that every group, religious or nonreligious, which opens its doors and opens its arms to shelter evacuees from this storm are able to get compensated for their generosity,” Kinerney said in an interview.
The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, issued a statement protesting the plans.
“After FEMA’s ineptitude in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, it’s distressing to see the Bush administration making even more blunders,” said Lynn.
“Before millions of taxpayer dollars are turned over to churches, there must be strict accountability provisions and safeguards to protect the civil and religious liberty rights of those who need help.”
But Robert Tuttle, a law professor at George Washington University Law School, called the reported plans “entirely an extension of the faith-based initiative” and said they don’t prompt the kinds of constitutional issues that have been raised by other aspects of the initiative.
“There’s nothing that’s particularly constitutionally troubling about it as long as the government is treating religious providers no different from others in that same circumstance,” he said in an interview.
Tuttle, who also serves as an analyst with the Albany, N.Y.-based Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy, noted that it is unusual for individual houses of worship to be reimbursed by the government, but there is precedent for FEMA funding for religious buildings.
In 2002, President Bush ordered FEMA to change its policies so religious nonprofits could qualify for emergency relief after a natural disaster. After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Congress passed legislation that permitted grants to houses of worship that were damaged at that time, he said.
_ Adelle M. Banks
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Dalai Lama: Religion Should Motivate People to Work for Peace
NEW YORK (RNS) Global peace begins with inner peace. It was not a new message for the Dalai Lama, but at an interfaith church service here this week, the spiritual icon offered a new twist for people of faith.
“Who created war?” he asked. “The sky? No. These plants?” He waved an arm at the altar greenery.
“No. We human beings, we create our own suffering,” he told a crowd at The Riverside Church on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on Monday (Sept. 26).
“Various religious traditions have, I think, an important role” in motivating people to act for peace, said the Nobel Prize winner.
Such inspiration is possible without religion, he said. “However, if a person have faith, it serves great potential to develop those inner strength.”
The exiled Tibetan leader spoke as a member of the Peace Council, an international group of religious leaders who organized the service.
Ushered into the church with a procession of drumming and music, the sprite Tenzin Gyatso, 70, the 14th Dalai Lama, nearly sprinted down the center aisle. Hanging green, orange and blue flags displayed symbols of the world’s faiths, while participants twirled painted fish puppets on long wooden poles.
The beloved international figure praised interfaith gatherings for the message of unity they send to the public.
Drawing a chuckle from the pews, he said that even with “different hats” _ he pointed to the fezzes, yarmulkes and turbans of religious leaders who stood with him at the altar _ “all carry same message.”
That message, he said, is “message of love.”
Despite his penchant for jokes, that was the Dalai Lama’s only comedic moment of the evening. As people of faith, he said, “we should be very serious” about global peace.
Religion can become “almost like fashion,” he warned, urging congregants not to let that happen. “We must implement what you believe.”
Admirers of different faiths packed the church for the public service, which kicked off the Peace Council’s ninth convention. The Dalai Lama helped found the 10-year-old organization, whose members will examine the growing political power of the religious right in a weeklong conference at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan.
_ Nicole LaRosa
Irish Church Leaders Praise IRA for Laying Down Arms
(RNS) The Irish Republican Army’s final decommissioning of its weapons has been warmly welcomed by church leaders in Northern Ireland.
“For Irish Republicanism, today’s announcement represents a massive step,” said the Anglican primate, Archbishop Robin Eames of Armagh, of the announcement made Monday (Sept. 26) by Gen. John de Chastelain, head of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning.
“For all of us it can become a major step towards a peaceful and just society if it heralds the end of all criminality and violence in future,” said Eames.
He warned that many who had been disappointed in the past would take “a great deal of convincing” but urged all politicians to reflect carefully and “measure their response most carefully.”
Welcoming the announcement, the Catholic bishops of Northern Ireland said: “This represents an immensely significant confidence-building measure in favor of a more peaceful and stable society in Northern Ireland. Today’s announcement is a vindication of the efforts undertaken by all those who have, over the years, courageously worked to replace violence with dialogue.”
They called on “all other paramilitary groups” to affirm their commitment to exclusively peaceful and democratic means.
The president of the Methodist Church in Ireland, the Rev. Desmond Bain, said decommissioning had “opened wide the door for progress towards better understanding.” He said everyone now needed to work for “the trust that will bring us all closer to the future of justice and peace that God intends.”
The decommissioning process was observed by two religious eyewitnesses, the Rev. Harold Good, former president of the Methodist Church, and Catholic priest Alec Reid.
They said they spent “many days watching the meticulous and painstaking way” in which de Chastelain and his colleagues went about the task of decommissioning the “huge amounts” of explosives, arms and ammunition.
In a statement, they said they were convinced “beyond any shadow of doubt the arms of the IRA have now been decommissioned.”
However, Unionists remained unhappy that there was no photographic verification of the decommissioning. Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionists, the largest party in the suspended Northern Ireland assembly, said questions remained without photographic proof, an inventory and details of how the weapons were destroyed.
_ Robert Nowell
Mass. Catholics Protest Removal of Priest Who Criticized Archdiocese
(RNS) About 300 supporters of an embattled Roman Catholic priest known for his high-profile criticism of the church hierarchy held a dusk-to-dawn vigil Monday night (Sept. 26) to protest his removal from a local pastorate.
The Archdiocese of Boston last week asked for the Rev. Walter Cuenin’s resignation because of alleged improprieties involving a stipend and a vehicle he used as pastor of Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Newton, Mass., according to a statement from the parish finance council. The Archdiocese of Boston did not respond to requests for comment.
Both the stipend and vehicle had parish finance council approval and had passed muster with two archdiocesan audits during Cuenin’s 12 years in the Newton pastorate, according to statements from the parish. Many in the congregation now suspect Cuenin is being punished for speaking out.
“Father Cuenin has been one of the leading voices of protest and inquiry throughout the scandal of clerical sexual abuse,” the parish council said in a statement. “We do not consider it a coincidence that the Archdiocese has now created a way to force Father Cuenin out of his pastorship, and we find it deceitful, cowardly and immoral to pretend that parish finances have anything to do with his departure.”
As a proponent of gay and women’s causes within the church, Cuenin has earned a national reputation. During the 2002 abuse scandal, he convened a meeting of area priests during which about 60 signed a statement calling for then-Archbishop Bernard Law to resign. Two other priests who signed have also lost their parishes without being reassigned, according to Voice of the Faithful, a lay reform group organized at the height of the abuse scandal.
“This has happened to other priests who have been outspoken,” said Our Lady member Giovanni Fazio. “I call it a witch hunt of the first class.”
In his own statement, Cuenin said the archdiocese has suggested he “get more involved in ecumenical and interfaith relations.” He urged parishioners not to protest and not to “harbor any ill will toward the bishop,” Fr. Sean P. O’Malley.
Nevertheless, protesters came from Our Lady and other area parishes for all-night prayer services Monday, marking the last day of Cuenin’s tenure.
_ G. Jeffrey MacDonald
Quote of the Day: Episcopal Bishop John Chane of Washington
(RNS) “If the church is to really focus on the issues of the Bible’s teaching and the core teachings of Jesus Christ, why does this archbishop spend so much time on human sexuality issues while so many of his countrymen and women are oppressed by poverty, illiteracy and violence?”
_ Episcopal Bishop John Chane of Washington, writing in a column in Washington Window, his diocesan newspaper, about Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola’s criticism of the pro-gay policies of the Episcopal Church.
MO/PH END RNS
