c. 1996 Religion News Service
(Following is a collection of international religion stories compiled by RNS staff, wire and denominational reports.)
Episcopal Church leaders ask prayers for Bosnia peacekeepers
(RNS)-Leaders of the Episcopal Church are asking Americans to pause at noon on Thursday, Jan. 25, to pray for the Bosnian peacekeeping mission and the safety of the peacekeepers.”The peacekeeping mission to Bosnia is a historical undertaking, both because it is the first great peacekeeping effort after the end of the Cold War and because Bosnia is a particularly tortured and torn land,”said Bishop Charles Keyser, the denomination’s bishop for the Armed Forces.
Bishop William Swing of the Episcopal Diocese of California, who began the initiative, has invited other Christian, as well as Jewish and Muslim leaders, to participate.
Swing said the long holiday season-which began with the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah, includes the Christian holy days of Christmas and Epiphany, and, beginning Jan. 21, the Muslim observance of Ramadan-“offers fertile timing for members of all faith traditions to join in prayer.”We all want to help the peacekeepers bear the risks of mines, military accidents and hostile fire,”Swing said.”A time-honored form of support for those on a dangerous military mission is a day set aside for special prayer.”
Naked protester disrupts worship service marking Britain’s auto industry
(RNS)-A young woman, mimicking the 11th-century Lady Godiva, stripped naked during a worship service at the Anglican Coventry Cathedral in Coventry, England, to protest the church’s observance of the centenary of the British motor industry.”You are killing each other and you are killing the next generation,”the protester, 35-year-old Lucy Pearce, shouted as she took off her clothes. Pearce, a well-known anti-automobile crusader whose mother was killed in a traffic accident in 1965, was quickly hustled from the cathedral.
Coventry was the birthplace of the British automotive industry 100 years ago and also the town in which Lady Godiva, according to legend, rode naked through the streets to shame her husband, Earl Leofric, into ending oppressive taxes.
The service, which celebrated the automobile as a”mixed blessing,”also drew protests from environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth and Road Peace, an organization of relatives of those killed in traffic accidents.
But Bishop Simon Barrington-Ward of Coventry defended the service as”an act of rejoicing and thanksgiving for years of magnificent work on the part of all kinds of people and for a tremendous product which has done a great deal for humankind.” The service began with an 1897 car driving up the cathedral aisle, nearly choking the congregation with its exhaust fumes. It ended with a new, battery-powered model driving down the aisle.
In between, a prayer offered by the bishop said the British auto industry”has liberated and mobilized a whole society as well as giving employment to many thousands of people.”Another prayer, however, acknowledged the automobile’s harmful effects, including environmental pollution and the”relentless encroachment of new roads into our countryside.”
Israeli president’s remarks spark controversy with Germany’s Jews
(RNS)-Israeli President Ezer Weizman has upset Germany’s Jewish community by saying he does not understand how it can continue to live in the land of the Holocaust.
Weizman’s remarks were broadcast on Israeli Radio on Jan. 14, as the president began an official state visit to Germany.”I … cannot understand how 40,000 Jews can live in Germany,”Weizman said.”I am unable to understand that, but it is an independent world, so go ahead. The one thing I can say to Jews is what I always say to diaspora Jews-the place of Jews is in Israel.” Weizman’s remarks, quoted widely in the German press, provoked some criticism from German Jews.”I think it is of the highest importance that Jews live in Germany,”Hermann Simon, head of the Jewish Center in Berlin, told Reuters.”Otherwise, the `final solution’ would have succeeded in retrospect.”The final solution is the term the Nazis used for their plan to exterminate European Jewry.
But other Jewish leaders sought to play down Weizman’s remarks.”He says the same thing to American Jews and Belgian Jews and Jews in all other countries,”said Ignatz Bubis, chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.”That won’t impress many Jews.” Germany’s Jewish population has been growing as a result of immigration from Russia. Today there about 40,000 Jews in Germany, up from 30,000 15 years ago. Before the Nazi rise to power in the 1930s, there were 500,000 Jews in Germany.
Controversial theologian Fox compares Vatican to dysfunctional family
(RNS)-Matthew Fox, the controversial theologian and priest expelled from his Roman Catholic religious order, says the Vatican is like a dysfunctional family.
Fox, founder and director of the Institute of Culture and Creation Spirituality in Oakland, Calif., was expelled from the Dominican religious order in 1993 for failing to obey an order to leave California and return to his home province in Chicago.
Previously, he had been silenced for five years by the Vatican for expressing views at odds with church teaching, including what Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said was his apparent support of witchcraft.”It (the Vatican) can be compared to a situation where an alcoholic father spreads fear and exercises control of a family through his pitiful tantrums,”Fox told Ecumenical News International, the news agency supported by the World Council of Churches and other international religious bodies.
Fox, now an Anglican priest, made his comments in Perth, Australia, where he is lecturing.
In his lectures, Fox compared the Vatican to the Berlin Wall, and predicted it could crumble and fall almost overnight.
Fox said he did not take personally his own disciplining by the Catholic Church.”It is just part of the papal policy of control and disrespect towards theologians,”he said.”I am not the only one affected.”
British church leaders criticize government immigration proposals
(RNS)-British religious leaders are criticizing government proposals to limit the number of immigrants and refugees allowed into the country.
At a Jan. 13 London protest rally, Anglican Bishop Roy Williamson labeled the proposed measures”draconian”and said they had caused”fear and anger”among black and immigrant communities in his London diocese of Southwark.”We simply but firmly ask of the government that they put in place a system which treats everyone fairly and with humanity and which allows people to live with dignity whilst any asylum application or appeal is being heard,”Williamson said.
The proposed measure seeks to block illegal immigrants from receiving welfare aid and cuts back on housing and social security benefits for asylum seekers. It also creates a list of”safe”countries from which asylum applications will not be considered.
Home Secretary Michael Howard defended the government proposal as necessary because of what he called a”rising tide of bogus asylum-seekers.” But Roman Catholic Bishop Patrick O’Donoghue said the measure, if enacted, would”leave many church hostels and temporary accommodation projects with heart-breaking decisions about refusing accommodation to refugees,”according to Ecumenical News International, the agency of the World Council of Churches and other international religious groups.
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