c. 2007 Religion News Service
Amish School Reopens Six Months After Shooting Deaths
WEST NICKEL MINES, Pa. (RNS) Some carrying lunch pails, and all bundled against the cold, Amish children walked to their new school in Lancaster County on Monday (April 2), six months to the day after a gun-toting neighbor walked into their old schoolhouse and shot 10 students, killing five.
Aside from reporters and several marked and unmarked state trooper cruisers, there was no hint of the nightmare that they experienced at the hands of milk truck driver Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, who lived a mile or so away from the Nickel Mines Amish School.
Authorities believe Roberts had planned to first molest and then murder Amish schoolgirls, but when police arrived quickly he started shooting the children immediately.
Police say he apparently was haunted by a memory of having molested relatives 20 years earlier and was angry at God for the death of his infant daughter in 1997.
The Amish community demolished the old schoolhouse to erase a reminder of the horror experienced there.
Four of the five girls who were shot Oct. 2 have returned to the new school, called New Hope Amish School. The fifth, a 6-year-old, needs a feeding tube and is not able to communicate, according to the Associated Press.
_ Carrie Cassidy
Report Says Only 10 Percent of Britons Attend Church
LONDON (RNS) An in-depth survey by a British charity indicates that more than half of Britain’s adults claim to be Christian, but only one in 10 regularly attends weekly church services.
Tearfund, a Christian relief and development charity, said its poll of some 7,000 men and women over the age of 16 suggests that Christianity remains the dominant faith in Britain, with 53 percent _ 26.2 million _ of the adult population adhering to its beliefs.
But those figures from 2006 also represent a sharp decline from the last British census, in 2001, when nearly three-quarters of adults identified themselves as Christian.
The poll, “Churchgoing in the UK” indicates that only 7.6 million adults in a nation with a total population of more than 60 million go to church each month, and only one in 10 attends each week.
Two-thirds of those polled said the only times they had gone to church during the year were for occasional weddings, baptisms and funerals.
By contrast, a Gallup Poll from late March found that 29 percent of Americans attend church weekly; 24 percent attend at least once a month and 44 percent seldom or never attend.
But in a somewhat surprising finding, Tearfund said Tuesday (April 3) that it found some 3 million adults who either had stopped going to church or had never gone who would consider attending if given the “right invitation.”
It said “a personal invite, a family or a friend attending, or difficult personal circumstances are most likely to encourage people into church.”
“The church for a lot of people is a very strange place these days,” conceded Tearfund president Elaine Storkey, who also lectures in theology at Oxford University. “They are not familiar with what’s going on inside the building, with the form of service, with the way people gather, with what they say, how they pray.”
Keith Porteous, executive director of the National Secular Society, told the BBC that the survey “shows that two-thirds of the UK population have no connection with the church” and that Britain itself had become an “overwhelmingly” secular society.
_ Al Webb
Group Gives $600,000 to Fund Retirement for Priests and Nuns
WASHINGTON (RNS) A private Catholic group has raised more than $600,000 this year to help fund the retirement of aging priests and nuns. The grants will be distributed to 43 religious orders.
The group, Support Our Aging Religious Inc. (SOAR), received applications for more than $1 million from 57 religious orders when applications were due last November, said SOAR president Sister Patricia Sullivan.
SOAR was founded in 1986 to help ensure financial stability for elderly Catholic priests and nuns. The group is separate from an annual retirement collection coordinated by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Since 1988, when the bishops started the retirement collection, U.S. Catholics have given more than $500 million to the campaign. Annual retirement costs for religious communities exceed $925 million.
The money is given to religious orders which _ unlike priests who work for dioceses _ must fund their own retirement needs.
Religious congregations cited handicap-accessibility renovations, medical equipment, elevator installments and roof replacements among the top needs. According to Sullivan, 16 percent of those in religious orders are 85 and older.
“The lay people that contribute want to give back to any of the religious that might have made a difference in their life. … They feel the religious have helped them, taught them in their time of need,” Sullivan said.
Recipients of the money are “thrilled” by the help, Sullivan said, and “they always make sure to mention that their benefactors are in their daily prayers.”
_ Melissa Stee
Quote of the Day: Pope Benedict XVI
(RNS) “In the communion of saints, it seems we can hear the living voice of our beloved John Paul II.”
_ Pope Benedict XVI, speaking at a Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica on Monday (April 2) to mark the second anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II. The Vatican is currently considering a move to beatify John Paul, which would put him one rank below sainthood.
Editors: Photos of the new Amish school to accompany the first item are available on the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.
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