c. 1997 Religion News Service
Report: Teen pregnancies down around the world; U.S. still high
(RNS) The rate of young women who become pregnant before the age of 20 is down in many parts of the world compared to 20 years ago, a new report said Wednesday (Feb. 12). But of all the industrialized nations, the United States has the highest rate of teen pregnancy.”We see encouraging signs that young women are more likely to delay childbearing,”said Jeannie Rosoff, president of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the nonprofit research group that released the report.”Although this progress is uneven, much change has taken place within a short time period, indicating enormous potential for swifter change if more is done to support adolescents and their life-altering decisions.” As examples of the decline, the report said that in the Dominican Republic, teen childbearing is down to 33 percent among women now in their 20s compared to 52 percent for women aged 40-44 who had given birth as adolescents. In Morocco, the figure dropped to 19 percent from 39 percent, the Associated Press reported.
In the United States, according to the report, 14 percent of American girls between the ages of 15 and 19 gave birth in 1996, double that of Britain, which had the next highest teen birth rate. The report said that 73 percent of the U.S. pregnancies were unplanned.
The report was released on the eve of a vote in the House of Representatives on Thursday allowing President Clinton to spend $385 million for international family planning programs.
The vote was the first on an abortion-related issue in the new Congress. Abortion opponents, led by the U.S. Catholic Conference and the National Right to Life Committee, had called on Congress to reject Clinton’s request on grounds that some of the family planning money goes to groups such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation that support abortion rights.
Relief groups, such as World Vision, which opposes abortion, as well as groups such as the National Council of Churches, Care and Save the Children, who do not take a stand on the abortion issue, argue that cuts in family planning funds”constitute a serious health threat to women, children, and families across the world.” By law, the money cannot be used to provide abortions.
The House approved letting Clinton spend the money by a 220-209 vote. But in a second vote on a separate bill, the House voted 231-194 to tie release of the funds to tighter restrictions on abortion by forbidding it to go to groups that support abortion.
The first bill is considered likely to pass the Senate but the second, sponsored by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., is given little chance of surviving the Senate and would face a presidential veto if it does.
Focus on the Family uses billboards to stress importance of families
(RNS) Focus on the Family, working with 26 billboard companies across the nation, has launched a billboard campaign aimed at stressing the importance of family togetherness.
More than 2,000 billboards in 120 cities feature families spending time together. For instance, one billboard reads”My Dad Always Makes His Tea Time”and shows a little girl sitting down for tea with her father.”We really just want to remind people to take a look at their families,”said Melanie Beroth, publicity manager for Focus on the Family, a Colorado Springs-based Christian ministry led by author and psychologist James Dobson.
Other billboards include one depicting a father holding his baby while his wife rests in bed. The slogan reads”My Husband Works the Night Shift.”Another, slugged”My Family Loves In-tents Moments,”shows a family camping in the backyard and roasting marshmallows over a campfire.”We’d love it if it’d help people to go camping or (do) any other activities,”said Beroth, who said the point is to encourage family members to spend time together.
The project was spearheaded by Charles H. Renfroe, owner of Outdoor West, the Atlanta-based billboard company. His and other billboard companies have donated the space _ worth more than $2 million _ to Focus on the Family.
The billboards are set to be displayed for six months in about 20 markets, including Boston, Seattle, Atlanta, Miami, Minneapolis and Philadelphia. In other cities, they will appear through the end of February.
Methodists pull missionaries from Zaire
(RNS) The ongoing civil war in eastern Zaire has forced the United Methodist Church’s Board of Global Ministries to evacuate its last 19 missionaries and aid workers from the country.
Board of Global Ministries officials said Tuesday (Feb. 11) that the U.S. State Department had recommended the evacuation.
Board officials said that”several”missionary pilots and their planes had already left Zaire because of threats that the Zairean army would confiscate the planes and force the pilots to fly for the army.
The war in Zaire erupted in October, when ethnic Tutsis, who had lived in Zaire for decades, were threatened with expulsion. It has since grown into a general rebellion against Zairean President Mobuto Sese Seko.
On Thursday (Feb. 13), the rebels said they had captured another town in the region and were considering attacking a huge refugee camp at Tingi-Tingi. The rebels claim the camp shelters Hutu militants responsible for the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.”It is not only a refugee,”Desire Kabila told the Associated Press.”It is used as a headquarters of the former Rwanda army. Those people from the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) don’t talk about this. It is a matter of complicity.”If they keep the camp as a sanctuary for the killers … we shall be forced to clean them out of the camp,”he said.
U.N. officials said there are about 120,000 refugees currently in the Tingi-Tingi camp and its size is swelling as the fighting displaces more refugees.
New York cafe offers e-mail and kosher food
(RNS) Cyberspace has another first: a New York kosher restaurant is adding computers to its menu.
As far as anyone can tell, the IDT Megabite Cafe will be the first kosher”cybercafe”in the nation, The New York Times reported Thursday (Feb. 13). In addition to checking e-mail, patrons will be able to nosh on kosher sushi and pizza.
The cafe, located in the heart of Manhattan’s diamond district, where many Orthodox Jews work, will offer free Internet access to customers _ but not on the Jewish Sabbath and holidays when it will be closed.”As part of the community of kosher people, this is exciting,”said Howard Jonas, chairman of IDT Corp., an Internet provider based in Hackensack, N.J.
Since the first cybercafe opened in Santa Monica, Calif., in 1988, more than 300 such restaurants have opened around the world.
Mississippi bans same-sex marriage
(RNS) Mississippi Gov. Kurt Fordice signed a law Wednesday (Feb. 12) banning same-sex marriage in the state, calling such relationships”perverse.””For too long in this freedom-loving land, cultural subversives have engaged in trench warfare on traditional family values,”the Associated Press quoted Fordice as saying.
Mississippi is the 17th state in the past year to pass a law barring same-sex marriage. The trend was prompted by fears stemming from a court ruling in Hawaii that the state could not deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples and that other states would be forced to recognize such marriages.
Under the law signed by Fordice, the state will deny recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states. Fordice said the law would ensure that gay couples do not enjoy such benefits of marriage as health insurance protection.
New Christian-Muslim strife in Pakistan
(RNS) About 4,000 Christians protested in Karachi, Pakistan, Thursday (Feb. 13) in response to recent attacks by Muslims that have left 1,000 Christians homeless.
Police fired tear gas and arrested about 200 protesters, the Reuter news agency reported. Dozens of demonstrators were reported injured, including one young man who was shot. Witnesses said police fired shots into the air, possibly accounting for the young man’s injury.
Police said the protesters fought back with sticks and damaged several police vehicles.
On Feb. 6, thousands of Muslims attacked a Christian village, destroying homes and churches. The Muslims accused the Christians of committing blasphemy against Islam, which is a capital offense in Pakistan.
The vast majority of Pakistan’s 131 million people are Muslims. Only a small minority is Christian.
Papal visit to Lebanon probable in May
(RNS) Pope John Paul II will probably visit Lebanon in May, the Vatican said Thursday (Feb. 13)
The pontiff cancelled a planned 1994 visit to the Middle East nation because of security concerns following the bombing of a Maronite Catholic church that killed 11 worshipers.
Muslim-Christian strife has been a hallmark of Lebanese life for decades.
Papal Nuncio Pablo Puente, the Vatican’s ambassador to Lebanon, said in Beirut that the pope would spend up to 48 hours in Lebanon and not visit any other nations in the region, Reuter news agency reported. Puente said an exact date for the visit had yet to be set.
Authenticity of Shroud of Turin challenged
(RNS) Yet another expert has weighed in on the authenticity _ or lack of it _ of the famed Shroud of Turin, the linen cloth long venerated as the fabric in which Jesus’ body was wrapped after his crucifixion.
This expert, British microchemist Walter McCrone, says the shroud is a fraud and that the image many see as the outline of a human body was created by daubing a male model with red ochre and wrapping him in a sheet.
McCrone, who has examined fibers and particles from the shroud, will publish his findings next month in a book,”Judgment Day for the Turin Shroud,”the (London) Sunday Times reported.
According to McCrone, after the model had been covered in red ochre, his forehead, cheekbones, and other parts of his head and body would have been pressed on the linen to create the image that now exists. Vermillion paint would then have been splashed on the images of wrists, feet and body to represent blood.
Although tests using the carbon 14 method of dating have placed the cloth’s origin sometime between 1260 and 1390 A.D., the shroud continues to be venerated by many as authentic and commands an array of religious and scientific defenders.
Methodist giving topped $100 million in 1996
(RNS) Giving to the national and international programs of the United Methodist Church increased by about $2.5 million to a total of $100.38 million, the denomination’s General Council on Finance and Administration has announced.
But the increase in giving was fractionally less than the church had asked its regional jurisdictions to provide, according to council officials.
The church uses a system of apportionments _ amounts of giving required from annual (regional) conferences based on the number of members in the conference and other factors _ to set its budget every four years. Because the apportioned amounts for 1996 were larger than those for 1995, more dollars were given but the percentage of the apportionments paid during 1996 was slightly less than in 1995.
Quote of the day: Sociologist Robert Bellah
(RNS) Sociologist Robert Bellah, best known for his work on civil religion and the book”Habits of the Heart”addressed a meeting of the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Church Redevelopment Initiative Team in San Antonio in late January where he criticized the management model of church structures:”I have even heard one bishop in my Episcopal Church call himself the CEO of the diocese, with the implication that the clergy are employees and the laity are the customers. A more complete denial of the body of Christ would be hard to imagine, and we know that consumer Christianity is not confined to the Episcopal Church.”
MJP END RNS
