c. 1996 Religion News Service
Mayors: Hate crimes not major part of urban crime woes
(RNS)-The U.S. Conference of Mayors said Tuesday (March 19) a survey of 172 of its member-cities showed hate crimes are not considered a major part of most cities’ crime problem.”Nearly half of the cities surveyed view hate crimes as a minor part of their overall crime problem,”Mayor Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City, Mo., told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.”The other half is evenly divided between those who say it is average in terms of magnitude and those who say it is not a problem.””Some officials (in the survey) commented, however, that while numbers of hate crimes may not be large, the impact of these crimes on the community can be significant, especially where violence is involved,”Cleaver said.
Cleaver said the survey also showed that 15 percent of the surveyed cities reported an increase in hate crimes in 1995 compared with 1992, when the conference first studied the issue. Nearly a quarter of those surveyed said hate crimes were down in their jurisdictions from 1992, and the remaining 61 said the number of hate crimes is the same now as in 1992.
The Judiciary Committee is considering legislation to permanently re-authorize the Hate Crime Statistics Act, enacted in 1992, under which the Justice Department collects information on hate crimes from local and state jurisdictions. Hate crimes are those committed on the basis of prejudice against race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation.
Cleaver, who is also pastor of St. James-Paseo United Methodist Church in Kansas City, said the Conference of Mayors supports re-authorization of the act because it is”important that we have the ability to monitor hate crimes in our nation, just as we would want to be able to monitor a deadly and contagious disease.”Although the number of hate crimes we know about is relatively small-at least in comparison with other serious crimes in this country-I think we all agree that one hate crime is one too many,”he said.
Church council in Guyana criticizes capital punishment
(RNS)-Guyana’s resumption of capital punishment after six years without an execution has drawn sharp criticism from the South American country’s Council of Churches.
The council, whose members include the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches as well as the major mainline Protestant bodies in Guyana, criticized capital punishment, saying”an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth belong to the law of Moses (Old Testament) and is not the ideal of Christ.”The Christian teaching is that Christ was executed not as an example that should continue to perpetuate itself, but rather as an event through which humankind can be reformed and saved from sin and death,”the council said in a statement.
On Tuesday (March 19), ALC, the Anglican-sponsored news agency that covers religion in Latin America and the Caribbean, reported that the council statement was prompted by the resumption of hanging convicted murderers.
In February, 25-year-old Ayube Khan became the first convicted murderer to be executed in six years. Khan was convicted in 1990 of stabbing to death an 11-year-old boy as the boy resisted Khan’s attempt to steal his bicycle.
ALC said that a large crowd gathered outside the prison to cheer the execution.
In a separate statement, leaders of the Pentecostal Church in Guyana said even though the Bible teaches”an eye for an eye”and that hanging should not be abolished altogether, there should also be room for mercy.”If the convicted criminal shows remorse over his act of killing an innocent life and begs for mercy and forgiveness, then the condition of his heart could be considered as a criterion for clemency,”the Pentecostal body said in a statement.
Roman Catholic groups oppose immigration reform bill
(RNS)-Leaders of the umbrella organizations for the nation’s Roman Catholic nuns and priests said Tuesday (March 19) they are opposed to pending legislation that would overhaul U.S. immigration law.
The leaders said they were fearful immigrants were being used as scapegoats in the debate over the nation’s economy.”We reiterate our concern that using immigrants to allay national anxiety about our economic situation is neither rational nor in the spirit of generosity that has so characterized the American people,”Sister Nancy Schreck and the Rev. Joseph Levesque said in similar but separate letters to Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas.
Schreck is president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and Levesque is president of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men’s Institutes.
Hatch and Smith are the Republican leaders responsible for shepherding immigration reform legislation through the Senate and House. The legislation seeks to cut down on the number of illegal aliens entering the country, set limits on the number of legal aliens allowed into the United States and make it more difficult for refugees and asylum seekers to enter.
The two Catholic leaders were especially critical of provisions in the House and Senate bill that would make it difficult for immigrants already in the United States to bring family members to the country.”In an era of so much talk about the importance of the family, we join the Catholic bishops of the United States in their total opposition to these provisions,”the two said.
Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., chief sponsor of the Senate bill, defends the immigration curbs.”Today we are a mature nation with a host of serious domestic problems … and a sustained and excessive immigration is viewed, rightly or wrongly, as compounding our domestic problems,”he told the Senate Feb. 29 as it began debate on the measure.”This current level of immigration is the highest at any time in our history … and this is not the olden days when people were coming to the United States to fill our factories and travel west to build our dams and reservoirs,”he said.
Update: Presbyterians to aid in rebuilding burned-out black churches
(RNS)-Presbyterian World Service, an agency of the Presbyterian Church (USA) designed to respond to crisis situations, said Tuesday (March 19) it is sending $7,500 to the denomination’s Alabama presbytery to aid in the rebuilding of black churches that have been arson targets.”Over the past 15 months, 23 black churches in Alabama and six other Southern and border states have been torched,”the Presbyterian agency said in a statement.”This appears to be an increasingly dangerous trend, a tactic that not only terrorizes the black community, but threatens our entire civil society,”the agency said.
However, also on Tuesday, Donnie Carter, an official of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who is leading the federal investigation in the rash of black church burnings, told USA Today that suspects have been identified in six of the cases and none appears to have been motivated by race.
Carter refused to elaborate because none of the suspects has been arrested, USA Today said.
Canadian Catholic conference names new English language general secretary
(RNS)-The Rev. Douglas Crosby, a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate religious order, has been named the new English language General Secretary of the Canadian Conference of (Roman) Catholic Bishops.
Crosby, 46, succeeds Bishop-elect James Weisgerber, who has been named Bishop of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Crosby has been the conference’s director of missions.
When he assumes his new post April 2, Crosby will work with the French language General Secretary, the Rev. Emilius Goulet. Together, the two general secretaries serve as chief staff officers for the bishops’ conference.
Quote of the day: United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
(RNS)-On Monday (March 18), General Secretary Boutros Boutros-Ghali opened the annual meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, warning that ethnic and civil wars pose the greatest danger to the world body’s pursuit of human rights:”Every day the United Nations has to confront internal conflicts, civil wars, partitions, secessions, ethnic clashes and tribal wars. These new conflicts are also the most damaging to the rights of the human person, since it is often the (civilian) populations themselves which are targeted, bombarded, tortured and subject to violence.”
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