c. 2006 Religion News Service
Arson Arrests Relieve, Sadden Pastors of Burned Alabama Churches
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (RNS) Leaders of churches destroyed by arson responded with relief at the arrest of three people Wednesday (March 8), but they also expressed sympathy for the suspects and their families.
“I feel sorry for the young guys,” said the Rev. Robert Murphy, pastor of Pleasant Sabine Baptist Church in Bibb County, which burned Feb. 3. “They’re going to lose a lot of years in their lives in prison for what they did. At their age, they haven’t got the opportunity to know what life’s all about. I feel bad for their parents who put so much into their education.”
The arson spree started Feb. 3, when five Baptist churches were burned in Bibb County.
Rehobeth Baptist Church in Lawley, Ashby Baptist in Brierfield and Pleasant Sabine Baptist in Centreville were destroyed; Old Union Baptist in Randolph and Antioch Baptist in Centreville were damaged.
The second group of fires came Feb. 7, when four more churches were set ablaze in Pickens, Sumter and Greene counties.
“It’s hard enough to raise kids, then for them to go out and do a heinous crime like this, it’s sad,” said Galilee Baptist Church Assistant Pastor Willie Speights.
Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church in Boligee, Dancy Baptist in Aliceville and Galilee Baptist in Panola were destroyed; Spring Valley Baptist Church in Gainesville was damaged.
“We’re very relieved to know this had no political, racial or religious overtones,” said the Rev. Jim Parker, pastor of Ashby Baptist Church in Bibb County. “To the churches in our community, this was devastating. For a blow like that, you’re looking for a reason. To think it was malicious vandalism, we’re just kind of taken aback.”
_ Greg Garrison
Laws Requiring Same-Sex Adoptions Create Dilemma for Catholic Charities
(RNS) A decision to discontinue Roman Catholic adoption services in the Boston area is raising questions elsewhere about the reconcilability of state laws and church teachings on homosexuality.
After a three-month study, Catholic Charities of Boston concluded Friday (March 10) that a Massachusetts antidiscrimination law makes it impossible for the agency to adhere to Catholic teachings that prohibit the placement of children with same-sex couples. Rather than challenge the law in court, the agency opted to end its 103-year-old tradition of facilitating adoptions.
“The world was very different when Charities began this ministry at the threshold of the 20th century,” said Catholic Charities of Boston President J. Bryan Hehir in a statement. “Now we have encountered a dilemma we cannot resolve. In spite of much effort and analysis, Catholic Charities of Boston finds that it cannot reconcile the teaching of the church, which guides our work, and the statutes and regulations of the commonwealth.”
Meanwhile, the Archdiocese of San Francisco received an e-mail from Cardinal William Levada, the top doctrinal watchdog at the Vatican, and the former archbishop of San Francisco. Levada indicated that “Catholic agencies should not place children for adoption in homosexual households,” according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The issue will require scrutiny elsewhere in coming months, according to Carol Peck, director of family services at Catholic Charities U.S.A.
“It’s a complex but very local situation,” Peck said. “Each state law is very different … . We’re certainly watching it.”
Across the country, Catholic Charities saw a 6 percent increase in adoptions to 4,229 in 2004, the most recent data available. Nationwide, about 50,000 children were adopted that year from foster care, according to the federal Health and Human Services Department, which doesn’t track private adoptions.
More than 100 local chapters of Catholic Charities are registered to facilitate adoptions, and all must comply in full with state laws, Peck said. She said Catholic Charities U.S.A. hasn’t analyzed how many states have laws akin to Massachusetts’.
Adoption by same-sex couples is against the law in three states: Utah, Florida and Mississippi. Another 16 states have introduced legislation that would make it illegal.
_ G. Jeffrey MacDonald
Lay Reform Group Calls for Top Bishops to Step Aside
BOSTON (RNS) The top two officers at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops faced new pressure Friday (March 10) to relinquish their national posts in light of allegations related to sexual misconduct.
Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), a Boston-based lay reform group that claims 30,000 members, called for interim leaders to replace Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., and Cardinal Francis George of Chicago in their respective roles as president and vice president of the bishops conference.
Skylstad faces allegations dating back to the early 1960s from a woman who says he sexually abused her as a minor; Skylstad has denied the allegations. In Chicago, George is facing heat for having failed to act on a panel’s recommendation last October to remove a suspected pedophile from ministry. The accused priest, Daniel McCormack, was arrested in January.
Accused bishops should step down from their offices until investigations are complete, according to VOTF, a step that is required of all priests under the bishops’ 2002 Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.
“The public credibility of the Charter, the accused bishops, and the entire Conference of Catholic Bishops is at stake,” said VOTF President James E. Post and President-elect Mary Pat Fox in a statement. “There is no mistaking the seriousness of this moment.”
At the bishops conference, however, there were no signs of a shake-up. Spokesman Bill Ryan said nothing in the conference bylaws would require an office holder to step down as a result of allegations.
“Both Bishops Skylstad and Cardinal George will be continuing with their duties as president and vice president of the Conference,” Ryan said. “There’s no plan or procedure to ask them to step down from their offices.”
John Moynihan, a spokesman for the Boston group, said lay leaders are not calling for either Skylstad or George to resign their local positions as bishops at this time, but he suggested that could come next.
“This is step one,” Moynihan said. Asking bishops to leave their diocesan offices would be “step two.”
_ G. Jeffrey MacDonald
Orthodox Rabbis Issue Universal Conversion Standards
(RNS) A large gathering of Orthodox rabbis has agreed on some universal standards for Jewish converts, including the cost of conversion and which children can become Jewish.
The three-day meeting of 180 rabbis from five continents ended Tuesday (March 7) in Hollywood, Fla. It was organized by Eternal Jewish Family (EJF), a Monsey, N.Y.-based organization that considers itself a “clearinghouse” for standardizing Orthodox conversions worldwide.
Too many converts, said founder and rabbinic director Rabbi Leib Tropper, think they have had valid Orthodox conversion ceremonies, but then they move to a different country or a different part of the United States and are not accepted by the rabbis in their new home.
The goal of the conference was to put in place measures that would stop controversial conversions and make observant Jews feel more like a globally connected community.
“In order to have an unquestioned continuity of Judaism, we have to have standards that are unquestioned,” Tropper said.
To convert to Judaism is a very complex process, involving the supervision of a beit din, or rabbinical court, comprised of three rabbis who must rule that your religious convictions are genuine, and your commitment to living by Jewish law is rooted in both learning and faith.
Among the resolutions the rabbis agreed on were that a beit din can only accept $350 per rabbi in fees for conversion _ Tropper said that some were charging a total of $4,000 for those services, which he said was not right.
Also, the group agreed that although Orthodox Jews believe that only the child of a Jewish woman can be considered Jewish, the child of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother can undergo a conversion ceremony as long as the mother agrees to give the child an Orthodox education or undergo conversion herself.
The conference was attended by the chief rabbis of South Africa and Poland, the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel, and rabbis from the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Brazil. U.S. rabbis from Salt Lake City, Boston, Charlotte, N.C., New York and other cities attended.
Tropper’s goal is for anyone who converts to Judaism to have “a Cadillac conversion,” which can never be questioned by any rabbi.
“Why settle for a broken Chevy, which may go down the highway, but nobody wants it in their driveway?” he said.
As intermarriage rates worldwide remain high _ the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population survey put the U.S. intermarriage rate at 47 percent _ Tropper says that universal conversion standards can take some of the confusion out of the process, and can even help stem the tide of intermarriage, which he calls “a serial killer for the continuity of the Jewish people.”
The conference did not debate the controversial issue, particularly in Israel, of whether Orthodox rabbis should recognize as Jews those who convert to Judaism under a Reform rabbi’s supervision.
_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi
Markets Close to Protest Terrorist Blasts in Holy City of India
(RNS) Life came to a standstill in Varanasi, India, when a shutdown was called to protest terrorist bomb blasts that rocked the holy city in the northern India state of Uttar Pradesh.
Shops in the city downed their shutters and all the markets were closed for business on Wednesday (March 8).
The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, said that the Tuesday blasts were part of a “terror strike” and smacked of a “deep-rooted conspiracy.”
India itself remained on high alert to prevent sectarian violence in the aftermath of the three bomb attacks that killed 20 people and wounded more than 100. Armed police guarded temples and other holy places not only in Uttar Pradesh but across the country.
In Uttar Pradesh, anti-riot squads have been deployed throughout the state in a bid to prevent any backlash from Hindu groups, who blame Muslim militants for the violence.
Just hours after the bomb blasts in Varanasi, the police forces of Uttar Pradesh and of the capital city, New Delhi, hit back at the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which experts believe could have carried out Tuesday’s attacks at the Sankat Mochan temple, which is dedicated to the Hindu monkey deity Hanuman.
In two separate encounters, police groups shot dead in Lucknow, the state capital, a resident of Madhya Pradesh (central India) who was reportedly a senior organizer of the Lashkar, and two Lashkar militants in Delhi.
Speaking in Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, in New Delhi, the presiding officer, Somnath Chatterjee, told members Wednesday: “The senseless acts of violence are being committed in a nefarious attempt to disturb the even tempo of our life and to affect India’s unity and integrity. Our people should, in a united manner, continue our fight against such acts of terrorism and violence.”
Taking a broader view of the Varanasi incidents, the leading Indian newspaper The Hindu said in an editorial Thursday: “Behind the inhumanity of the terrorist strikes in Varanasi’s Sankat Mochan temple and a railway station there was a clear plan and mission _ to generate communal tension and conflict. Responding effectively to the challenge of terrorism demands clarity of understanding as well as intellectual and technological resources. …”
_ Achal Narayanan
Catholic Bishops Launch Web Site Rebutting `Da Vinci Code’
(RNS) U.S. Catholic bishops are the latest group providing online information disputing historical claims in “The Da Vinci Code,” the best-selling novel soon to become a motion picture.
A Catholic Web site (http://www.jesusdecoded.com) was launched Thursday (March 9). It includes articles from theologians, media commentators and art historians, while promoting a television special called “Da Vinci Decoded,” produced by the Interfaith Broadcasting Commission for the purpose of presenting the Catholic point of view.
The Web site, operated by the U.S. Catholic Bishops Communication Campaign, also advertises a 16-page booklet entitled “The Authentic Jesus.” Soon to be a movie directed by Ron Howard and based on the book by Dan Brown, “The Da Vinci Code” introduces the idea that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and was a father, a view at odds with what is believed by the Roman Catholic Church and most other Christian groups. The film is scheduled for release May 19.
“Our concern is a pastoral one,” said Monsignor Francis Maniscalco, director of communications for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He said the novel’s claim that “the Catholic Church doesn’t convey the truth (about Jesus) and that there is instead another truth is quite frankly absolute nonsense.”
The Web site also features the point of view of the Catholic prelature Opus Dei, which has publicly disputed its portrayal in the novel. In the novel and film, an albino assassin Opus Dei monk named Silas is a major obstacle to the hero’s goal. A representative from Opus Dei contributes an essay on the history and works of the group.
“Jesus Decoded” is slated to be released to NBC affiliates nationwide the weekend after “The Da Vinci Code” is released in theatres.
_ Nate Herpich
Christian Peace Activists to Stay in Iraq Despite Kidnappings, Murder
(RNS) The North American peace activist group Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) says it will continue its work in Iraq despite the murder of one of four team members abducted in January.
The body of American Quaker peace activist and CPT brigade member Tom Fox, 54, of Clear Brook, Va., was discovered Thursday (March 9) in Baghdad by U.S. troops. His death was announced Friday.
The peace activist apparently had been tortured before his death, officials said. No reason has been given for his murder.
“Our work continues,” Kryss Chupp, a spokeswoman for the peace activist organization said in an interview Monday (March 13).
The fate of the other three team members remains unknown. Chupp said the CPT will remain in Iraq “to greet our missing team members when they are released.”
She said despite Fox’s murder, the organization remains hopeful that the other three _ Norman Kember, 74, of Great Britain and James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, both of Canada _ will be released.
Fox and the others traveled to Baghdad in November to work with Iraqi peace groups in defense of Iraqi prison detainees and their families.
The four were abducted Nov. 26, and a group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigades has claimed responsibility for the kidnappings. The group threatened to kill the peace activists unless Iraqi detainees in U.S. and Iraqi prisons were immediately released.
The kidnapped activists have been seen on several videotapes, though the last one, broadcast March 7, did not show Fox.
Fox’s life and death are being marked in vigils and religious services.
“In response to Tom’s passing, we ask that everyone set aside inclinations to vilify or demonize others, no matter what they have done,” CPT said in a statement.
CPT is committed to non-violent action in conflict zones, such as Iraq. The group has offices in Chicago and Toronto and was organized in 1984 by Mennonites, Brethren and Quakers _ members of the traditional peace churches.
_ Chris Herlinger
Canadian Catholic Leaders Again Defend Gays, Scold Vatican
TORONTO (RNS) For the second time in less than two weeks, Canadian Catholics in positions of religious authority have lashed out at the Vatican over its treatment of homosexuals.
On Feb. 26, 19 Roman Catholic priests in Quebec published a letter in a Montreal daily newspaper in which they strongly denounced the Vatican’s opposition to same-sex marriage and the ordination of gay men.
In the latest case of public dissent, representatives of more than 200 Canadian religious orders wrote to Canadian Catholic bishops, criticizing the church for being unwelcoming to homosexuals and unwilling to give women decision-making roles.
The 26-page letter from the Canadian Religious Conference, released Thursday (March 9), represents monks, nuns and priests in religious orders. It accused the bishops of having a “clerical mentality,” adding that it regretted the bishops’ lack of independence from the Vatican.
The missive came as the Canadian bishops prepare for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI later this year, an event that is scheduled once every five years.
The document takes issue with church teaching on divorce, contraception, homosexuality and assisted suicide.
“We regret,” says the CRC, “the holding up of an ideal that leaves little room for advancement and progress; the defense of principles that do not reflect human experience (divorce, contraception, protection against AIDS, alleviation of suffering at the end of life).”
The writers also expressed regret at the “the legalistic image of the Catholic Church _ and of our Canadian Church _ its rigidity and its intransigent stands on sexual morals; its lack of openness regarding access to the sacraments for divorced and remarried Catholics, its lack of compassion for them; its unwelcoming attitude towards homosexuals.”
The letter calls on bishops to “create opportunities for discussion and discernment; engaging in the questions and problematic situations raised in today’s society: …the place of women in the church, marriage between persons of the same sex, assisted suicide.”
The conference expressed hope that the church “will position itself closer to the major issues of the world: impoverishment, inequalities, rights and roles of women, defense of the disenfranchised, respect for the environment and the safeguarding of humanity.”
_ Ron Csillag
Report Tries to Explain Increasing Violence Among Muslims in France
PARIS (RNS) Growing violence among Muslims in France, which exploded in last fall’s riots, is being largely fanned by a lack of political and social opportunities, according to a newly published report.
Paradoxically, says the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, “it is the exhaustion of political Islamism, not its radicalization, that explains most of the violence, and it is the depoliticization of young Muslims, rather than their alleged reversion to a radical kind of communalism, that ought to be cause for worry.”
France was shaken by a wave of arson attacks and rioting in late October and November. Much of the violence was blamed on disenfranchised Muslim youths living in tatteredsuburban housing projects.
Alongside the violence, authorities also fear the rise of religious extremism among an estimated 6 million Muslims in France, Europe’s largest Islamic community. Police have made a rash of arrests of suspected Islamic militants over the past few years, and reportedly foiled a number of terrorist plots.
The Crisis Group suggests traditional Islamic social and religious groups carry little weight these days in France _ and had almost no influence during the fall riots. It criticizes the popular, conservative Union of Islamic Organizations of France, for example, for currying favor with French authorities at the expense of its members.
“The end result was to alienate the organization’s social base, especially its youth, which no longer felt adequately represented by leaders they believed had been co-opted by the government,” the report said.
Like the riots, the missionary Salafist branch of Islam is also filling the vacuum among some French Muslims, as a form of political expression, the Crisis Group said. One worrying offshoot, it says, is the rise of home-grown jihadism.
The report is the first of an upcoming series on Islam in Europe by the Crisis Group, an independent think tank focusing on preventing and resolving conflicts.
The organization offered a number of recommendations in its report, ranging from reducing discrimination and curbing police abuses in underprivileged neighborhoods, to giving a greater voice and representation to Muslims in France.
_ Elizabeth Bryant
Vatican Decries Christian Exodus From Middle East
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Continuing violence in the Middle East has set off a Christian “exodus” from the Holy Land, a top Vatican cardinal declared on Tuesday (March 14).
In a letter to bishops around the world, Cardinal Ignace Moussa Daoud, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Eastern Churches, said decades of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians have made living conditions in the region untenable for many Christians. He called on Catholics worldwide to increase aid to the region’s dwindling Christian population.
“This distressing situation leads to poverty and unemployment, with serious consequences for families and for the entire population,” Daoud said. “It also increases the disturbing phenomenon of the constant exodus of Christians, especially young couples for whom there is no prospect of a safe and dignified future.”
Daoud’s call follows a recent attack on one of Christianity’s holiest shrines, the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, in Israel. On March 3 an Israeli couple and their daughter entered the building and detonated small explosives during a Lenten prayer service.
Though no one was injured, the incident set off rioting around the basilica that injured more than a dozen people and renewed accusations that Israeli authorities have failed to protect the Christian sites.
A delegation of Arab Christians from Israel that visited the Vatican in February reported that less than one in 50 people now living in the area known as the Holy Land are Christians and the number is expected to drop further.
In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Raed Mualem, a member of the delegation to the Vatican and director of Mar Elias University in Ibillin, Israel, said the presence of Christians in the Holy Land has become “inconsequential” in the eyes of the West.
Daoud appeared to address that concern in his letter Tuesday.
“It is a duty of all Catholics throughout the world to accompany the Christian communities of that blessed land with prayer and concrete solidarity,” he said.
_ Stacy Meichtry
Dalai Lama Seeks Visit to China; Wants Tibetan `Autonomy,’ Not Separation
NEW DELHI, India (RNS) The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, has repeated his wish to visit China and also his desire for Tibetan autonomy rather than complete independence.
On the 47th anniversary of the 1959 uprising against China’s takeover of Tibet, the Dalai Lama said in a statement on Friday (March 10) from Dharamsala _ the hilltop town in northern India which is the seat of his government in exile _ that he wanted to go to China to visit Buddhist pilgrimage centers.
“As well as visiting the pilgrim sites, I hope to see for myself the changes and developments in the People’s Republic of China.”
In an ongoing dialogue on the future of Tibet, representatives of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government last met in February for a fifth round of talks. The Dalai Lama said the last round of parleys should have cleared any doubts as to his aspirations for a future Tibet.
“I have stated time and again that I do not wish to seek Tibet’s separation from China, but that I will seek its future within the framework of the Chinese constitution,” the 70-year-old spiritual leader said.
The Dalai Lama’s chief representative, Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, said after the February talks that there was a growing understanding between the two sides.
In his latest (March 10) statement, the Dalai Lama said: “I have only one demand _ self-rule and genuine autonomy for all Tibetans, i.e., the Tibetan nationality in its entirety. This demand is in keeping with the provisions of the Chinese constitution, which means it can be met. It is a legitimate, just and reasonable demand that reflects the aspirations of Tibetans, both in and outside Tibet.”
_ Achal Narayanan
Quote of the Week: Evangelist Billy Graham
(RNS) “Some of your levees may have broken down as a result of the storms, but I sense other barriers have broken down here also _ barriers that have separated different churches and races from each other. May they never be rebuilt.”
_ Evangelist Billy Graham, preaching in New Orleans on Thursday (March 9), giving his first sermon since his New York crusade last June.
MO/RB END RNS
