c. 2008 Religion News Service
Gorbachev denies Christian conversion
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev debunked reports, based on his recent visit to the shrine of St. Francis of Assisi, that he had become a Roman Catholic.
“Some media have been disseminating fantasies _ I can’t use any other word _ about my secret Catholicism,” Gorbachev told the Catholic Church’s AsiaNews agency. “To avoid misunderstandings I would like to say _ I was atheist and I stay atheist.”
Gorbachev visited the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, Italy, with his daughter Irina in mid-March. A subsequent report in Italy’s La Stampa newspaper called the event a “spiritual perestroika,” and the international press promptly spread news of the supposed conversion.
Press reports quoted Gorbachev saying that “it was through St Francis that I arrived at the Church, so it was important that I came to visit his tomb.”
The former Soviet leader was baptized as a child in the Russian Orthodox Church, which has long accused the Catholic church of seeking to convert its followers.
A spokesman for the Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow told AsiaNews that Gorbachev’s remarks in Assisi had been made “in emotional terms, rather than in terms of faith. He is still on his way to Christianity.”
Gorbachev became the first and only Soviet leader to visit the Vatican in 1989, when he met there with Pope John Paul II.
_ Francis X. Rocca
Court will reconsider home schooling case
(RNS) The California Court of Appeal agreed Tuesday (March 25) to reconsider a decision that essentially outlawed home schooling by parents who are not certified as teachers.
“Parents have a fundamental right to make educational choices for their children,” said ADF Senior Counsel Gary McCaleb, according to the ADF Web site. “Because this ruling impacts all Californians, we believe the case deserves a second look.”
The court initially ruled against a child enrolled at Sunland Christian School, a private home schooling program, and decided that parents who home-school their children could face criminal charges in California.
Public school enrollment is generally required unless a child is enrolled in a full-time private school or tutored by a credentialed person. A lower court did not order such schooling based on a belief that the parents had a constitutional right to home-school.
James Dobson, founder of Colorado-based Focus on the Family, had called the initial ruling “an all-out assault on the family” and “an imperious assault on the rights of parents.”
“The ruling should have been confined to that one couple, not used to punish an entire class of people, the vast majority of them religious conservatives,” Dobson said.
However, in the initial 18-page decision, Associate Justice H. Walter Croskey wrote that the problem is that “the children were taught at home by a non-credentialed person.”
The Home School Legal Defense Association began a petition against the decision, and the Pacific Justice Institute, which represented Sunland Christian School in Sylmar, Calif., have said they will remain actively involved as the case moves forward.
“We are pleased that the Court of Appeal has decided to re-hear the … case, and we are hopeful that the fundamental rights of these parents … will be honored,” Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, said on the company’s Web site. “Homes chooling parents should be treated as heroes _ not hunted down or harassed by their own government.”
_ Brittani Hamm
Factory delay means no matzo crackers for Passover
NEWARK, N.J. (RNS) When Passover begins on April 19 and Jewish families gather for the traditional seder meal, they can expect this question: “What happened to the Tam Tams?”
The bite-sized matzo crackers are a Passover perennial, perfect for dipping in egg salad or chopped liver and eating straight from the box.
But Manischewitz, the global kosher food producer, has temporarily stopped making Tam Tams because of production problems at its Newark plant.
A $15 million oven that was supposed to debut in October didn’t come on line until December, Manischewitz spokesman David Rossi said. That didn’t leave enough time to produce the company’s full line of matzo products for Passover.
“We realized there are only so many hours in the day that we can make matzos, and something had to give,” Rossi said. That something turned out to be the Tam Tams.
Matzo is a flat bread or cracker made without yeast, so the dough won’t rise before it is baked. The eating of matzo is an essential part of the Passover seder, which commemorates the Hebrew slaves’ hasty exodus from Egypt.
Manischewitz introduced Tam Tams in 1940. The origin of the name has not been definitively documented, but the word “ta’am” in Hebrew means taste, “so we think that’s the derivation,” Rossi said.
Manischewitz needs five months to make all its Passover matzo products.
“This year, we only had between three to four months,” Rossie said.
Some Jews are taking the loss hard.
“It is a big deal,” said Edie Kodosh, 14, of Springfield, N.J. “It is a big deal. I’ll miss them.”
Other fans of the crunchy snack took a stoic view. Morty Leiwant of Short Hills first read about the situation in an edition of the New Jersey Jewish News in February.
“I like Tam Tams, but I’m not going to get emotional about it,” he said.
_ Beth Fitzgerald
Quote of the Day: A letter to Sen. Hillary Clinton
(RNS) “Today, you took a new and disquieting step when you decided that it would be to your political benefit to wade into the waters of the issues surrounding Sen. Barack Obama and his former pastor. This crosses the line and brings us full force into the zone of the politics of personal destruction.”
_ A letter to Sen. Hillary Clinton from various religious leaders, including the presidents of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, the National Baptist Convention of America and the Interdenominational Theological Seminary.
KRE/RB END RNS
