c. 1996 Religion News Service

Buddhist monk urges end to `land mines of the heart’

(RNS) A Cambodian Buddhist monk and a prominent Lutheran pastor joined Monday (July 29) in calling for a total ban on the production, export and use of anti-personnel land mines.”We come here to pray for peace and a world free of land mines,”the Ven. Maha Ghosananda, a 79-year-old Buddhist monk known as the”Gandhi of Cambodia,”told a rally at Washington’s Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House.

But first, he told the demonstration of about 100 people,”the land mines in the heart”_ hatred, greed and ignorance _”must be removed before peacemaking can begin in the world.” Ghosananda was joined by the Rev. Paul Wee of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, who served as a United Nations elections monitor in South Africa and is an expert in conflict resolution.

Wee compared the presence of some 100 million land mines around the world to the pipe bomb that exploded Saturday at the Olympic Games in Atlanta.”This bomb goes off and we are shocked and outraged, as rightly we should be,”he said. But in the response”to this immoral act, we sense the unity of the whole human family.”So, too, with the innocent victims of land mines, he said.

The White House rally was called to welcome Ariel Brugger, a peace activist who had just completed a 1,300-mile”interfaith pilgrimage”from the Hopkins, Minn., headquarters of Alliant Tech Systems, the largest U.S. producer of land mines, to Washington to call for a complete ban on anti-personnel land mines.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the Senate’s leading anti-land mines activist, called for making the current moratorium on land mine exports a permanent law. He also urged that the one-year U.S. moratorium on land mine use, due to become effective in 1999, be made permanent.”It is very, very difficult for the United States to get and urge other countries to ban land mines when we don’t do it ourselves,”he said.

Currently, 40 countries have either adopted legislation or endorsed the call for a total ban on land mines. President Clinton has said he supports an eventual ban on the weapons but is not ready to push for an immediate outlawing of all anti-personnel mines.”What I have learned is that Americans are largely ignorant about land mines,”Brugger said.”Daily I was asked, `what are land mines and why do you want to ban them.'” Once the issue was explained, she said,”most Americans support a ban. Americans want to do good. Americans want to do the right thing.” Brugger said she walked about 20 miles a day during her pilgrimage and was hosted by church and peace groups along the way.

Monk dies in prison; Dalai Lama urges pressure on Beijing

(RNS) A dissident Tibetan monk jailed by Chinese authorities for his pro-democracy activities has died in prison, according to Amnesty International and the Tibet Information Network.

Kelsang Thutop, 49, died July 5 in Drapchai Prison in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, although his death was not reported until Saturday (July 27) by the two human rights organizations.

On Sunday, the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual and political ruler, urged the United States and other nations to step up pressure on China in an effort to prod Beijing into negotiating Tibet’s future status. The Dalai Lama did not mention Thutop in his remarks.

The Associated Press said that Thutop was in poor health but had not received medical care. The Tibet Information Network, a London-based pro-Tibetan independence group, said Thutop suffered from malnutrition and physical abuse. However, The New York Times said Thutop’s death was caused by an unspecified illness.

Thutop had served seven years of an 18-year sentence. He first got in trouble with the Chinese, who have occupied Tibet since 1950, when he led street protests in 1987. He was arrested in 1989 and accused of spreading”counter-revolutionary propaganda.” Speaking in Chicago, where he was attending a conference, the Dalai Lama said”it is time the United States and other nations should use real pressure to urge China to stop transferring masses of Chinese settlers into Tibet and to enter into serious negotiations about the future of Tibet.” The Dalai Lama said”a major reason China refuses to negotiate with us is that the world has stood silent about the original falsehood that Tibet has always been a part of China.” Beijing claims Tibet has historically been part of China, although Tibet had long been independent prior to the Chinese takeover. Recent U.S. support for Tibetan independence has been tepid out of an apparent unwillingness to upset China.

Britain’s Jewish community declining in size

(RNS) Great Britain’s 300,000-member Jewish community is declining by about 1 percent annually because of a low birth rate, emigration and assimilation, according to a recent survey.

The leading authority on British Jews also warned that the community is fragmenting, with a growing gap between religious and secular Jews, according to a report published Monday (July 29) in the Jerusalem Post.

The paper said the recent survey found that 50 percent of British Jewish men under 30 have non-Jewish spouses or partners and that an equal number think of themselves as secular or”just Jewish.” The British intermarriage rate is in line with the figure for American Jews, who are currently marrying non-Jews at a rate of 52 percent, according to various surveys.”Roughly we have a situation in which the religious extremes are gaining at the expense of the center, while at the same time the whole is contracting,”said historian Geoffrey Alderman, identified by the Jerusalem Post as the foremost authority on British Jewry.

Alderman said that by the middle of the next century Britain’s Jewish community”will be very small”and centered around London and Manchester. He also said that the community will be”characterized by extreme segmentation.” In 1967, some 410,000 Jews lived in Britain, according to the World Jewish Congress. Jews first settled in Britain in the 11th century, although the entire community of about 4,000 was expelled in 1290. They began to return in the 17th century.

Much of the recent emigration has been to Israel, where more than 25,000 British Jews have settled since 1948.

Polish bishops: no church burial for bootleggers

(RNS) Roman Catholic Bishop Alojzy Orszulik of the diocese of Lowicz, Poland, has banned church burials for bootleggers and other traffickers of illegal alcohol to mark the church’s traditional August”month of sobriety.””Drinking alcohol leads to the break-up of marriages, the falling apart of families, the emotional handicap of children, to adultery, riots, catastrophes, work accidents and fornication,”Orszulik said in a letter read in diocesean churches Sunday (July 28).

The Roman Catholic Church, which claims about 90 percent of Poland’s population as members, has traditionally proclaimed August as a time to examine the perils of alcohol consumption.

In the letter, Orszulik said that attempts to restrict the sale and use of alcohol in Poland have failed, according to the Geneva-based Ecumenical News International, a religious news agency. Poland is ranked third, after Russia and Romania, in the consumption of hard liquor. An estimated 10 percent of the adult population in Poland suffers from alcoholism.”The alcoholic wave is flooding weddings, funeral wakes and first communions, as well as parties, discos and friendly meetings,”the letter said.”We cannot remain passive. We must condemn … bootleggers, all those who make a fortune out of human weakness. We will deny them church funerals.” In the letter, Orszulik said that despite the state monopoly on alcohol production,”huge amounts”are being imported and clandestinely marketed.

The bishop described abstinence as a”Christian virtue,”adding that heavy drinkers risked”the claws of addiction and eternal damnation.”

Venezuela’s Catholic bishops take on casino gambling law

(RNS) Venezuela’s Roman Catholic bishops have successfully blocked what they called”premature approval”by the Venezuelan chamber of deputies of a law that would regulate and thus legalize casino gambling.

According to the ecumenically-funded Latin American and Caribbean Communication Agency (ALC) based in Lima, Peru, the Venezuelan Bishops Conference mounted a public campaign against swift approval of the law by the lower chamber of the legislature.

They called for a wider, public discussion of gambling, arguing that lawmakers might vote for approval”because of the pressure on the part of foreign investors and juicy commissions, knowing that the result will be money laundering and drug trafficking, among other things.” A spokesman for the bishops’ conference said the prelates, in a meeting with legislators, had won a postponement of the vote on the bill until October, a ban on television advertising by casinos, and a change in the name of the law.

Currently the proposed law is simply known as the”Casinos and Game Rooms Law,”but Archbishop Ignacio Velasco of Caracas said the lawmakers agreed to change its name to the”Law for the Control of Casinos, Games Rooms and Slot Machines.” Chamber of Deputies President Cristobal Fernandez Dalo defended the legislative”fast track”for the law because of what he called a current”legal gap.” He said that currently some 170 casinos and games rooms are already operating, most in tourist areas of the country, and there is no law to regulate their activities.

Quote of the day: Dr. William J. Arnold on ministry and medicine

(RNS) Dr. William J. Arnold, chairman of the department of medicine and director of the internal medicine Residency Program at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Ill., spoke at a recent conference,”Retrieving and Reweaving Faith into Health Care,”sponsored by the Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith and Ethics. In his remarks, Arnold commented on healing and the end of life:”The end of life is the setting where our medical ministry can be most effective, yet there is no training in end-of-life care in residency or medical student educational programs. Rather, medical students are frequently taught and witness relentless pursuit of delaying or avoiding death … searching for a cure until the end, while neglecting so many other issues important to the patients and their family.

Thus, while in our present paradigm the physician always fails when the patient dies, the healer may still triumph. The desire by patients and their families to have healers present at the end of life, that is, physicians who are sensitive to their personal, social, family, and religious needs, may provide the springboard for us to introduce these concepts back into our medical schools and residency programs.”

MJP END RNS