c. 2005 Religion News Service
Episcopal Report Says Alaska Drilling Would Violate Human Rights
WASHINGTON (RNS) A new report co-sponsored by the Episcopal Church says President Bush’s plan to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would endanger the human rights of the Gwich’in native people, who are overwhelmingly Episcopalians.
The report said the drilling plan _ currently under consideration by Congress _ would threaten a herd of porcupine caribou that are considered sacred by the Gwich’in and are a main source of food.
“International law requires the United States to protect the fundamental human rights of native groups like the Gwich’in to culture and religion, their own means of subsistence and health,” the report said.
Drilling opponents say the plan will disrupt the migration of the caribou, specifically the birthing grounds of the 120,000-member herd. The Gwich’in consider the birthing grounds “the sacred place where all life begins.”
Arctic drilling is central to Bush’s energy plan, which supporters say could be worth $2.5 billion in drilling leases. Bush has said the drilling can be done “with almost no impact on land or wildlife.”
There are about 7,000 Gwich’in who live in 15 villages in northeastern Alaska and Canada. The report said the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requires the U.S. to protect native rights and culture, which includes the caribou herd.
Episcopal Bishop Mark MacDonald, whose Alaska diocese includes a dozen Gwich’in parishes, said the dominant culture “seems incapable of understanding the massive violation” that drilling would be for the Gwich’in.
“We believe, even based on the most optimistic of scenarios, that this would be the equivalent of de facto ethnic cleansing,” MacDonald said. “It would make their way of life unsustainable.”
The report, released Tuesday (Oct. 25), was produced jointly by the Episcopal Church, the Gwich’in Steering Committee and the International Human Rights Law Clinic at American University in Washington.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Parole Recommended for Episcopal Priest Convicted of Murder
LOS ANGELES (RNS) A convicted murderer and ordained Episcopal priest has been granted parole by California state prison officials, even though Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has denied parole in the past and may do so again.
A state Board of Prison Terms panel met for several hours Tuesday (Oct. 25) before granting the Rev. James Tramel’s application for parole at Solano State Prison near San Francisco. A state prison spokesman said that the decision now goes into a four-month review process, after which Schwarzenegger has 30 days to approve or deny Tramel’s parole.
Schwarzenegger denied the prison board’s first recommendation in March to grant parole to Tramel, 37.
“The difference this time is that he’s been found suitable twice by the board,” said the Rev. Richard Helmer, an Episcopal priest involved in the case. “We want to be respectful of the governor’s review of this case.”
As teenagers, Tramel and co-defendant David Kurtzman were convicted of second-degree murder and each was given 15 years to life for the 1985 slaying of Michael Stephenson, a 29-year-old homeless man trying to sleep in a gazebo in Santa Barbara, Calif.
Tramel has admitted that he encouraged Kurtzman and stood by and watched as Kurtzman stabbed Stephenson and slashed his throat. Kurtzman was denied parole for a fifth time last December.
Since being incarcerated, Tramel has studied theology and in a prison ceremony last June was ordained a priest by San Francisco Bishop William Swing. If paroled next year, Tramel will become one of the priests at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Berkeley, Calif.
Opposing Tramel’s parole has been the victim’s family, including his father, Edward Stephenson, who spoke at the parole hearing. According to the Santa Barbara News-Press, Stephenson said, “My son will not get a second chance all because this prisoner wanted to see his pre-planned murder carried out to the fullest.”
Tramel reportedly expressed remorse, saying of his victim, “his last word was `friend’ and I failed to be a friend.”
_ David Finnigan
Mormons to Remove Missionaries From Venezuela
(RNS) More than 200 Mormon missionaries are pulling out of Venezuela due to security concerns.
Michael Purdy, a Salt Lake City spokesman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said in a statement that the church has experienced problems renewing visas and obtaining new visas for their U.S. missionaries in Venezuela.
“Consequently, it has been decided to reassign missionaries from the United States serving in Venezuela to other Spanish-speaking missions in Latin America, the U.S. and Canada, where such missionaries are needed,” Purdy said.
The announced withdrawl comes two weeks after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered New Tribes Mission, an evangelical Christian group based in Florida, to leave the country. Chavez accused the group of having ties to the CIA and abusing indigenous peoples.
New Tribes Mission, which has worked in Venezuela for 59 years, strongly denies the claims and has requested discussions with Chavez to resolve the dispute.
The Venezuelan government temporarily suspended foreign missionary permits in August after television broadcaster Pat Robertson of Virginia Beach, Va., called for Chavez’s assassination.
Chavez ousted New Tribes Mission a few days after Robertson criticized him again, charging the Venezuelan with seeking atomic materials from Iran and having ties to Osama bin Laden. But Venezuela has officially dismissed any connection between Robertson’s statements and the New Tribes decision.
_ Jason Kane
Holy See Tries to Limit Legal Questions of Senior American in the Vatican
(RNS) The Holy See has asked a federal bankruptcy judge in Portland, Ore., to limit the scope of questions lawyers for priest abuse claimants can ask Archbishop William Levada, the senior American in the Vatican.
The Tuesday (Oct. 25) motion, citing the Vatican’s status as a sovereign nation and invoking various clerical privileges, seeks to prevent attorneys from asking Levada questions beyond his knowledge of child abuse allegations within the Portland archdiocese during his tenure as archbishop from 1986 to 1995.
Erin K. Olson, attorney for various plaintiffs who is tentatively scheduled to depose Levada Jan. 10 in San Francisco, said Vatican attorneys had indicated they would seek to limit her questions.
Olson said she plans to fight the motion because she wants to know whether Vatican or other church officials told Levada how to deal with priests accused of molesting children. She also wants to know whether he was operating under any national church sex abuse policies.
“We’re entitled to know why the Catholic church in the Archdiocese of Portland did what it did, why it moved pedophiles around,” she said.
Levada, most recently the archbishop of San Francisco, is the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, heading the Vatican office that polices church doctrine. He was scheduled to give sworn testimony in August, but won a five-month extension when he agreed to return to the United States in January.
_ Ashbel S. Green
Vatican Renews Conditioned Promise to Sever Diplomatic Ties with Taiwan
ROME (RNS) The Vatican’s No. 2 official has renewed the Holy See’s pledge to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan and re-establish relations with China on the condition that Beijing stop meddling in church affairs.
“I have said many times that if we had contacts with Beijing, our charge d’affaires who is in Taiwan would go to Beijing, not tomorrow morning, but tonight,” Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano said Tuesday (Oct. 25) during a visit to the Gregorian Pontifical University.
China and the Vatican have not had diplomatic ties since 1951 when China’s atheist Communist Party came to power. An estimated 5 million Chinese Catholics belong to a state-sanctioned church known as the Catholic Patriotic Association of China (CPAC).
An underground church of Chinese Catholics loyal to the pope is believed by some experts to have at least 8 million faithful.
“The church has always said it was ready to start dialogue, to establish contacts, to explain its traditions,” Sodano said. “But we must insist always on the principle that the church is one.”
Since the death of John Paul II, numerous Vatican officials have voiced the Holy See’s willingness to transfer its embassy from Tapei to Beijing.
In an address to the Holy See’s diplomatic corps in May, Pope Benedict XVI called on countries without formal relations with the Vatican to establish ties _ an appeal that observers believe was directed at China.
But disagreements over who officially holds the power to ordain bishops has become a stumbling block. Bishop Joseph Zen of Hong Kong told reporters on Friday that the Vatican and China maintain a tacit agreement that allows the pope to appoint bishops and the government to officially endorse them.
Tensions flared in recent months after Beijing prevented four Chinese bishops from attending a Vatican synod this October. One of the bishops, Wei Jingyi, 47, of Qiqihar, is a well-known papal loyalist who has spent four years in Chinese labor camps for his ties to the underground church.
_ Stacy Meichtry
Philosopher Testifies Intelligent Design Deserves `Affirmative Action’
HARRISBURG, Pa. (RNS) Intelligent design is a “fringe” concept that is “not normal science,” but it still should be mentioned to students as an alternative to evolution, according to a philosopher who testified in a high-profile federal trial.
Intelligent design is among the “disadvantaged theories” in need of “affirmative action” to gain access to the scientific community, said Steve William Fuller, a professor of sociology at the University of Warwick in Britain and an author of nine books on the philosophy, sociology and history of science.
“The cards are stacked against radical views,” Fuller said Tuesday (Oct. 25), speaking on a case involving the Dover Area School District. Science “was a much freer field in the old days.”
Fuller said that the peer-review process in science has a stultifying effect on new ideas such as intelligent design.
Proponents of intelligent design say that some aspects of living things and the universe are so complex that they must have been the work of an intelligent designer and can’t be explained through evolution, particularly natural selection. Critics say intelligent design is unscientific and inherently religious and argue that acceptance of the concept as science would quash scientific inquiry.
Under current conditions, intelligent design cannot develop to the point where it can be tested in the scientific community, which has become a “dogmatic” and “self-perpetuating elite network,” Fuller said. He called for “changing the ground rules of science” to make room for intelligent design and said that without such changes, “no minority theory would ever get off the ground.”
Fuller testified on behalf of the school district, which is in U.S. Middle District Court defending a policy requiring that ninth-grade science students be read a statement in which evolution is described as “not a fact” and intelligent design as “an alternative theory.”
Eleven parents, citing what they say is an infringement of their First Amendment rights, sued the district to have the statement thrown out. They are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Bill Sulon
Quote of the Day: Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C.
(RNS) “Chaplains ought to be able to pray based on who they are. Otherwise, it’s hypocrisy.”
_ Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., who joined efforts by Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., to send a letter to President Bush asking him to issue an executive order that would permit military chaplains to pray according to their faiths. He was quoted by The Washington Times.
MO/JL END RNS
