c. 2008 Religion News Service
Chaldean archbishop kidnapped in Iraq
(RNS) Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered security officials Tuesday (March 4) to work toward the release of a Chaldean Catholic archbishop who was abducted in Mosul on Friday.
Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was kidnapped and three of his companions were killed by a group of gunmen after leaving Mass, according to the Associated Press.
“Christians in Iraq are an essential component of the Iraqi society and a part that cannot be separated from the Iraqi people and civilization,” the prime minister said in a statement, according to AP. “Any assault on the Christians is an assault on all Iraqis.”
Al-Maliki, who last fall promised to protect the Christian minority, has urged Iraq’s interior minister and security officials in the Nineveh province to work for the archbishop’s release, said the statement from the prime minister’s office.
Both Iraqi and U.S. forces are searching for the gunmen responsible for the cleric’s abduction. At this point, Iraqi army Brig. Khalid Abdul-Sattar, the spokesman of the Nineveh province’s joint operation command, said there are no leads on Rahho’s kidnapping.
Ever since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi Christians have been perceived as being loyal to U.S. troops and have been targeted by extremists who label them “crusaders,” according to the AP.
The European Union and Pope Benedict XVI have both condemned the kidnapping and asked for the rapid release of Rahho.
“This abduction is one in the series of kidnappings carried out by terrorist groups against the Christians,” Rabban al-Qas, bishop of the northern Iraqi cities of Irbil and Amadiyah, told the AP.
Chaldean Catholics are a tiny minority in predominantly Muslim Iraq yet remain the largest denomination among fewer than 1 million Christians living in Iraq, according to last year’s International Religious Freedom Report from the U.S. State Department. The Chaldean church is an Eastern-rite denomination that is aligned with the Roman Catholic Church.
_ Brittani Hamm
Former solicitor general to represent UCC in IRS probe
(RNS) The United Church of Christ has retained a former U.S. solicitor general to represent the church during an Internal Revenue Service investigation of its political activities.
Seth P. Waxman, who represented the U.S. government before the Supreme Court from 1997 to 2001, will lead a team of attorneys working on behalf of the 1.2 million-member denomination, according to the UCC.
The IRS is investigating the Cleveland-based denomination because of a speech given by church member and presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama at a UCC event last summer. If the church is found guilty of improper politicking on Obama’s behalf, its tax-exempt status could be jeopardized.
“I am confident that, when the IRS learns all the relevant facts, it will conclude that the General Synod of the United Church of Christ did not come close to conducting political campaign activity at its 2007 gathering,” said Waxman, a partner at WilmerHale in Washington.
WilmerHale will handle the UCC case pro bono, the denomination said, and church officials are no longer soliciting donations to the “UCC Legal Fund,” which raised almost $60,000 in less than a week, according to the church.
_ Daniel Burke
Archbishops support blasphemy laws but won’t fight repeal
LONDON (RNS) The Church of England’s two top archbishops say they have “serious reservations” about government moves to repeal Britain’s blasphemy laws but said the church “is not going to oppose abolition now.”
The stance taken by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Archbishop of York John Sentamu was laid out in a joint letter sent to Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
A proposal to repeal the ancient statutes against blasphemy is contained in an amendment to a justice bill now before the House of Lords, the upper chamber of Britain’s Parliament.
The archbishops said they had “serious reservations about the wisdom of legislating at this moment” and suggested that “it is not clear that there is a pressing need for repeal.”
Nevertheless, their letter said, “having signaled for more than 20 years that the blasphemy laws could, in the right context, be abolished, the Church is not going to oppose abolition now, provided we can be assured that provisions are in place to afford the necessary protection to individuals and to society.”
The principles of laws against blasphemy have been inscribed in English law since ancient times, although the current common-law offense of “blasphemous libel” has its basis in 19th century court rulings.
Williams and Sentamu conceded that “this change” should be seen as reflecting a desire for removal “of what has long been recognized as unsatisfactory and not very workable offenses in circumstances in which scurrilous attacks on the Christian religion no longer threaten the fabric of society.”
The move should not, however, be interpreted “as a secularizing move, or as a general license to attack or insult religious beliefs and believers,” the two clerics said.
The archbishops said “the place of Christianity in the constitutional framework of our country, governed as it is by the queen, in Parliament, under God, is not in question in the current debate.”
_ Al Webb
St. Patrick’s feast will come early for some
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (RNS) This year more than ever, Catholics should remember St. Patrick was a man of faith, not the patron saint of partying.
So says Bishop Walter Hurley, head of the Grand Rapids Catholic Diocese, when it comes to celebrating St. Patrick’s Day on Monday, March 17.
Because the feast day falls during Holy Week for the first time since 1940, Hurley says parishes should observe Masses and festivities in Patrick’s honor the preceding Friday.
“The church believes that Holy Week and the sacred events of Holy Week are far more important than the celebration of any saint’s day,” Hurley said. “If you wish to celebrate the feast of St. Patrick, which you don’t have to do, we would ask you to celebrate on the 14th.”
The bishop, however, is granting a dispensation that day from the abstinence from meat expected of Catholics during Fridays in Lent, according to the diocese Web site.
Elsewhere around the country, bishops have asked that St. Patrick’s Day celebrations be moved from Holy Week. In Savannah, Ga., which attracts more than half a million revelers for St. Patrick’s Day, official celebrations have been moved to Friday, March 14. But in Columbus, Ohio, the local Shamrock Club is sticking to March 17, against the local bishop’s wishes.
“It’s not a sin to celebrate your Irish culture,” Mark Dempsey, the Shamrock Club’s president, told the Associated Press. “Actually, you’re born Irish first, and then you’re baptized Catholic.”
In New York, Cardinal Edward Egan won’t interfere, church spokesman Joseph Zwilling told AP. Egan will celebrate a Mass for St. Patrick on March 14, but will review the traditional March 17 parade from the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Meanwhile, Hurley, of Grand Rapids, said he’ll leave it up to individual Catholics’ consciences whether to partake of green beer on St. Patrick’s Day.
“Hopefully,” he said, “we’re dealing with adult people who have a sense of what’s important, namely Holy Week and Lent.”
_ Charles Honey and Kevin Eckstrom
Quote of the Day: Bishop Domenico D’Ambrosio
(RNS) “Padre Pio’s fingernails are as if he had just had a manicure.”
_ Bishop Domenico D’Ambrosio, the Vatican envoy appointed to oversee the exhumation of Padre Pio, a wildly popular Italian saint whose remains will be on public display to mark the 40th anniversary of his death. D’Ambrosio was quoted by the Associated Press.
KRE/PH END RNS
