c. 1996 Religion News Service
Catholic bishops call for welfare veto
(RNS) U.S. Roman Catholic bishops Friday (July 26) called on President Clinton to veto welfare overhaul legislation, saying that, “Sadly, this legislation falls far short of the U.S. bishops’ criteria for reform.”
On Tuesday (July 23), the Senate passed its version of welfare reform. The bill, the most sweeping effort to change the nation’s social welfare system since the New Deal, would end the 60-year federal guarantee of cash assistance for the nation’s poorest children and gives states wide power over shaping their own programs of aid to the poor and needy.
Last week, the House passed an even more stringent measure.
Roman Catholic, Jewish and mainline Protestant groups, while insisting they support “true” welfare reform, have fought the current Republican-crafted measure every inch of the way, arguing that fallout from the bill would cast more people into poverty.
On Thursday (July 25), they received some support for their arguments.
The nonpartisan Urban Institute, a Washington-based think tank, released a report estimating that the legislation, now in a conference committee of the House and Senate, would increase the number of children in poverty by 1.1 million.
An estimated 8.8 million children currently are in households receiving public assistance.
Under both the House and Senate passed bills, welfare recipients would be required to enter the workforce within two years and benefits would be limited to five years in a lifetime.
It is estimated that the bill would save about $60 billion over six years by ending aid to legal immigrants and cutting the food stamp program.
“It simply reduces resources and shifts responsibility, rather than really reforming welfare,” said Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., the top domestic policy official of the U.S. Catholic Conference. The USCC is the public policy arm of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Skylstad said the bishops approved of the Senate amendment striking down the so-called “family cap” that would have forbidden states from increasing aid to women who have additional children while on welfare.
“However, the Senate refused to address other fundamental flaws in the legislation,” Skylstad said. “Therefore, we will urge the president to veto this legislation which undermines the national safety net, unfairly targets legal immigrants and reduces help for the hungry.
“The nation urgently needs true welfare reform,” Skylstad said.
But he said the current bill in Congress “reflects the needs of politicians more than the needs of poor children.”
Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Egypt and Africa dies
(RNS) Parthenios III, 76, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, died of a heart attack Tuesday (July 23) during a visit to Greece, a church spokesman announced.
Parthenios was elected patriarch in February 1987, the 113th leader of the historic see at Alexandria, Egypt.
A noted ecumenist and theologian, Parthenios was elected a member of the World Council of Churches central committee in 1968, while serving as Metropolitan of Carthage in the diocese of Tripoli, Libya. He became a WCC president in 1991.
The Rev. Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, said that Parthenios “became a trusted interpreter of the Orthodox voice in the life of the World Council. His distinctive voice of wisdom and ecumenical passion will continue to reverberate for a long time to come.
Raiser said that Parthenios “facilitated the growth of the African expression of Orthodoxy, which has begun to widen and enrich the ecumenical movement in Africa.”
Parthenios was born in Port Said, Egypt, to parents of Greek origin and attended primary and secondary schools in Egypt.
He graduated from the Theological School of Halki in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1939 and did post-graduate studies at Oxford University and the Sorbonne in Paris.
He made his monastic vows in 1939 and was ordained a deacon and later a priest. From 1953 to 1959, he served as president of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Patriarchal Library of Alexandria, while in 1958 he was elected Metropolitan of Carthage.
Funeral services for Parthenios will be held Tuesday (July 30) in the cathedral church of St. Nicholas in Cairo.
Nigerian churches urged to get involved in fight against AIDS
(RNS) Christian churches in Nigeria, especially the clergy, have a special role to play in the fight against AIDS, according to a top Nigerian health official.
“The church has always maintained a compassionate and caring stand towards health-care delivery,” Pauline Tallen, a government health commissioner told a gathering of clergy and Christian health workers in the northern Nigerian town of Jos.
“I am certain it would do even better in the case of AIDS, since it touches the spiritual and emotional aspects of the affected and his or her family,” Kallen said in remarks reported by Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.
The AIDS virus has infected an estimated 1.5 million Nigerians.
The disease is having a heavy economic and social impact, Kallen said, because the majority of those struck by the disease are between the ages of 15 and 49.
“The clergy have a special role to play in providing adequate and relevant information about AIDS to worshipers and others, from the local congregations up to the general church council levels,” Kallen said.
The Rev. Samson Agidi, secretary general of the Fellowship of Christian Churches in Nigeria, who chaired the workshop, labeled AIDS a kind of “witchcraft.”
“AIDS is a witchcraft which has bedeviled the African continent, and which must be eradicated,” he said. “It is not a witchcraft practiced by witches, but a witchcraft that cannot let go a victim once such a victim is infected.”
Update: Churches urged increased efforts to solve Burundi crisis
(RNS) The Vatican suggested Friday (July 26) that military intervention may be the only way to stop the bloodshed in Burundi.
In an editorial, the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano sharply criticized the international community for its hand-wringing but hands-off policy in Burundi.
Governments are making appeals and saying “everything,” the newspaper said, adding, “as long as you don’t speak of some form of military intervention aimed at stopping the massacres.
“No government, including the great powers jealous custodians of international order is willing to take a risk to put an end to the crimes against humanity being committed in that unhappy African country,” the newspaper said.
The Vatican’s position came as the international community sought to respond to a coup Thursday (July 25) by ethnic Tutsi military leader Pierre Buyoya, considered by many to be a moderate in Burundi, which has become sharply divided along ethnic lines.
A second response from the international religious community to the Burundian crisis on Friday, however, was more cautious than the Vatican’s.
“It is quite clear … that the conflict in Burundi cannot be solved by military means,” the Rev. Ishmael Noko, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation said in a letter to the Organization of African Unity (OAU).
“It is therefore of utmost importance to encourage mediation, to bring about dialogue among the parties, and to find peaceful solutions to this conflict,” Noko said.
However, Noko did say the OAU should “demand and enforce a cease-fire and a negotiated solution to this conflict.”
Former Canadian Catholic bishop convicted in sex assault case
(RNS) Hubert O’Connor, the former Roman Catholic bishop of Prince George, British Columbia, Canada, has been convicted on two charges of sexually assaulting women when he directed a boarding school for Indians 30 years ago.
Reuters reported that O’Connor, 68, remains free on bail pending a sentencing hearing set for Sept. 9.
O’Connor was found guilty Thursday (July 25) on one count of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault and was acquitted on two other counts, Reuters said.
O’Connor resigned as a bishop in 1991 after the charges were filed. He admitted fathering a daughter with one of the women in 1967 but insisted that the sex was consensual.
He is the highest-ranking Catholic official to be charged with sex crimes in Canada, Reuters said.
Quote of the day: The Conference of Major Superiors of Men and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious on late-term abortions
(RNS) In April, President Clinton vetoed a bill banning a controversial late-term abortion procedure that opponents of abortion call “partial-birth abortion.” On Friday (July 26), the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, the umbrella organizations for Roman Catholic nuns and religious order priests, issued a statement linking the abortion issue to the church’s traditional concern for the poor. They urged a congressional override of the veto:
“The experience of religious men and women who work with the poor and marginalized and our commitment to Catholic social teaching tell us that the partial-birth abortion ban veto is about infanticide. When we legalize this procedure, we cross the line from benign neglect of our children to direct assault on the weakest and most defenseless among them.”
MJP END RNS
AP-NY-07-26-96 1636EDT
