c. 1996 Religion News Service

Scholars ponder whether Shakespeare was Roman Catholic

(RNS)-British scholars are discussing the possibility that William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was a”church-papist,”one who outwardly conformed to the established Protestant Church of England while secretly harboring Roman Catholic beliefs.

Shakespeare wrote at the height of the Elizabethan era, named after Queen Elizabeth I, when Anglican Protestantism was becoming the established church, Catholicism was persecuted, and Catholic priests were executed.

The debate began this spring with the publication of an article in the annual Shakespeare Yearbook by Margarita Stocker, a professor at St. Hilda’s college of Oxford University.

Stocker argued that Shakespeare’s play,”Love’s Labor’s Lost,”was a daringly subversive attack on Queen Elizabeth’s persecution of Roman Catholics.

Most recently, in the April 27 edition of The Tablet, the influential English Roman Catholic weekly magazine, Cambridge University professor Eamon Duffy, a specialist on the English Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries, weighs the evidence for Shakespeare’s Catholicism.

His judgment is equivocal:”Whether or not Shakespeare can be claimed as a Catholic writer, he was certainly not a Protestant one,”Duffy wrote.

According to Duffy, however, there is strong evidence to suspect Shakespeare of being secretly Catholic or at least having Catholic sympathies. He notes that Shakespeare’s hometown, Stratford-on-Avon, and its school, were”riddled with popery.”More importantly, Shakespeare’s mother, Mary Arden, was a member of one of the most prominent Catholic families in the region. There is also some evidence that his father had Catholic sympathies, Duffy wrote.”There is much in the plays to support (the) view”that Shakespeare was a Catholic, according to Duffy.”Several of them, especially `Hamlet,’ show an extensive familiarity with Catholic teachings, such as purgatory, and no hint of disapproval.”Indeed, Shakespeare’s treatment of Catholic themes is consistently sympathetic,”Duffy adds.”Friars, nuns and the religious life get a remarkably good press from him; Anglican clergy, by contrast, a bad one.” Still, Duffy wrote, one should be cautious”in fixing a denominational label to the greatest creative imagination England has ever produced.”There are problems even in any simple claim that Shakespeare was a Christian writer,”he wrote.

Popular French priest attacked for defending book that downplays Holocaust

(RNS)-A popular left-wing Roman Catholic priest and Nobel peace prize-nominee has been criticized for defending a book that contends Nazi crimes during the Holocaust have been exaggerated to justify Israel’s existence.

Abbe Pierre, 83-a former member of the French parliament who wears simple robes and a beret and is a popular advocate on behalf of the poor-defended”The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics”by his longtime friend, philosopher Roger Garaudy, in Monday’s (April 29) Liberation, a left-wing newspaper.

In his book, Garaudy rejected the widely accepted figure of 6 million for the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. He also said it was an exaggeration to call Nazis’ actions a genocide or holocaust.

Garaudy, a former Catholic who converted to Islam after being expelled from the French Communist Party leadership, said Israel used the Holocaust”myth”to justify its existence and attack Palestinians.

French Chief Rabbi Joseph Sitruk said in a statement that the extent of the Holocaust was a proven fact and that all those who denied it must be opposed, the Reuter news agency reported.

Pierre, who helped Jews escape to neutral Switzerland during World War II, denied he was backing Holocaust”revisionists.”However, he said”debate”on the extent of the Holocaust”is not closed”and that”the taboo is off. You will no longer be called anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic for saying a Jew sings out of tune.” Pierre-who was nominated for the Nobel peace prize in 1991 for his work on behalf of the poor-has admitted he has read only a summary of Garaudy’s book and not the text itself. Garaudy, meanwhile, is under investigation under a French law that makes it illegal to deny the historical reality of crimes against humanity.

Reader’s Digest senior editor wins top Amy Writing Award

(RNS)-Suzanne Chazin, a senior editor and staff writer for Reader’s Digest, has won the $10,000 first prize in the 1995 Amy Writing Awards contest.

Chazin will receive the award at ceremonies on May 23. She was chosen for her portrayal of a family’s belief in God in an article,”The Player of the Game.” The Amy Writing Awards encourage writers to”apply biblical truth to issues of contemporary concern.”Eligible articles must appear in non-religious publications and refer to a specific quotation from the Bible.

Other winners included:”A Far Country-God in the Newsroom,”by Patrick B. McGuigan (The Sunday Oklahoman, Oklahoma City, Okla.), which won a $5,000 second prize.”The Message of Miracles,”by Nancy Gibbs (Time magazine), which won a $4,000 third prize.”The Easter Baby-A Mother’s Story,”by Cynthia Culp Allen (Corning Observer, Corning, Calif.), which won a $3,000 fourth prize.”System Worked: Final Judgment Will be Made by God,”by Dr. Stephen Schwambach (The Evansville Press, Evansville, Ind.), which won a $2,000 fifth prize.

Winners were selected from more than 1,400 submissions published in secular media in 1995. The awards were announced by the Lansing, Mich.-based Amy Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes”the belief that the historic value system of Western civilization, which springs from the Judeo-Christian ethic, must be preserved at all costs.”

Muslims mark Eid al-Adha by slaughtering livestock

(RNS)-The world’s Muslims marked Eid al-Adha-the Feast of the Sacrifice-Sunday (April 28) by ritually slaughtering sheep, goats, camels and other livestock. The sacrifices commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son for God, and the meat is traditionally shared with poorer Muslims who cannot afford to purchase an animal.

In the Islamic telling of the biblical passage, Abraham is called by his Arabic name, Ibrahim, and the son is Ishmael, not Isaac as Jews and Christians believe. All three faiths teach that God provided a sheep for the sacrifice after acknowledging Abraham’s devotion.

The holiday marks the end of the Hajj, the period during which Muslims who are able go on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, where Muslims believe the sacrifice took place.

Although many Muslims in Western nations purchase an animal pre-slaughtered by a Muslim butcher, the public slaughtering of sheep and other livestock to celebrate the feast has become increasingly common.

On a farm near Hillsboro, Va., outside Washington, for example, about 300 Muslims gathered and slaughtered 70 sheep, according to the Washington Post. In Montfermeil, France, near Paris, thousands of sheep were sacrificed at one gathering of Muslims-drawing criticism from Brigitte Bardot, the ex-actress turned animal rights activist, the Associated Press reported.”It is Islamic debauchery,”said Bardot, who has also become an opponent of foreign immigration into France. Her comments were printed in the newspaper Le Figaro.

Argentina’s Catholic bishops asks forgiveness for role in `dirty war’

(RNS)-Argentina’s Roman Catholic bishops Saturday (April 27) asked for forgiveness for the involvement of priests in the violence that wracked the country during the”dirty war”waged against dissent during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.”We implore pardon to God our Lord for the crimes then committed, especially by those involving sons of the church, whether they be enlisted with the revolutionary guerrillas, working for the state or members of the security forces,”said a statement issued by the Argentine Episcopal Conference, the bishops’ organization.

The document was unanimously approved by the bishops after a six-day retreat and a year of debate within the hierarchy, according to Reuters.

During the dictatorship, military and paramilitary groups carried out a campaign of terror, known as the”dirty war,”against suspected leftists and leftist sympathizers, resulting in thousands of deaths and”disappearances.” Many Argentines feel the church did not speak out enough against the torture and killing.

U.S. Supreme Court won’t review South Dakota abortion law

(RNS)-The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to review lower court rulings that struck down parts of South Dakota’s abortion law as unconstitutional.

Although three justices urged that the court hear the appeal from South Dakota, the votes of four of the court’s nine members are needed to grant review.

At issue in the South Dakota case was the question of whether a state can ban abortions for unmarried girls under 18 who are dependent on one or both parents, unless a parent is notified.

Other than South Dakota, all states with abortion laws requiring parental notification or parental consent before minors can undergo an abortion have a so-called”judicial bypass.”Such a bypass lets the minor get a judge’s permission for the abortion rather than telling a parent, the AP reported. South Dakota’s law did not provide for such a bypass.

The 1993 South Dakota law, challenged by Planned Parenthood and a Sioux Falls, S.D., abortion clinic, was struck down before it was ever enforced.

Quote of the day: South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the church and homosexuality

(RNS)-South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, writing in the forward to”We Too Are Baptized,”a new prayer book for gays and lesbians published in England, reflects on the rejection gays and lesbians often experience in the church after first being accepted in baptism:”And then we spurn them, we shun them, because we are all caught up in an acknowledged or tacit homophobia and heterosexism. We reject them, treat them as pariahs, and push them outside the confines of our church communities, and thereby we negate the consequences of their baptism and ours. We make them doubt that they are the children of God, and this must be nearly the ultimate blasphemy.”

LJB1 END ANDERSON