c. 2000 Religion News Service
Vatican, Helped by Strong Dollar, Reports $5 Million Surplus
(RNS) Helped by a strong dollar and contributions from Roman Catholic dioceses worldwide, the Holy See finished 1999 with a surplus of more than $5 million despite heavy spending for the Jubilee Holy Year 2000, the Vatican reported Friday (June 23).
“I am happy to report that in 1999, for the seventh consecutive year, the Consolidated Financial Statement of the Holy See closed with a net gain,” Archbishop Sergio Sebastiani, president of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, told a Vatican news conference. “Thanks to God, it is not in the red.”
Total costs were 348,500 billion lire while total revenues were 358,225 billion lire for a net surplus of 9,725 billion lire, which is equal to $5,046,000 at the end-of-the-year exchange rate of 1,927.4 lire to the dollar, he said.
The financial statement covered the costs and revenues of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which controls management of most of the offices of the Roman Curia, the church’s central administrative bodies; the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, which oversees missionary work; the Apostolic Chamber, which administers the church between popes; Vatican Radio; the Vatican press and newspaper L’Osservatore Romano; and the Vatican Television Center.
The Vatican city-state, which is a separate entity, had a surplus of $2.8 million while completing work on a new entrance to the Vatican Museums, an underground parking garage, restoration of buildings and logistics improvements, Sebastiani reported.
The prelate said the financial statement showed that although the Holy See expenses were up 3.7 percent over 1998, revenues increased by 5.8 percent.
“The augmentation in costs was in large part determined by the increased activities of the offices of the Roman Curia and of the commercial media enterprises of the Vatican in preparation for the imminent Jubilee of the year 2000,” he said. “The increase in revenues, however, is attributed to the favorable exchange rates among currencies, especially the appreciation of the value of the American dollar.”
Because of the strong dollar and the economic boom in the United States and Europe, the Holy See more than doubled its 1998 revenues from interest, dividends and the sale of securities. In 1999, the revenues totaled $45 million, Sebastiani said. He said revenues from real estate fell by about $4 million, however, because of higher maintenance costs.
The Jesuit-operated Vatican Radio, which broadcasts in 47 languages and employs almost 400 people of 63 nationalities, had the single largest deficit _ $18.4 million _ while L’Osservatore Romano and the Vatican Television Center together lost $21.8 million. All the media operations were beefed up for Holy Year.
Since it was revised in 1983, the Vatican’s Code of Canon Law provides for dioceses worldwide to donate funds for Holy See operations that do not generate income. Sebastiani said this income rose from $5.4 million in 1992 to $21.4 million in 1999, according to the 1999 exchange rate.
German dioceses were the largest contributors, closely followed by those in the United States, with each country providing about $7 million, he said. The other leading contributors in descending order were Italy, Austria, Canada, South Korea, Spain, France, Australia and Ireland.
Peter’s Pence, the collection taken annually in dioceses throughout the world to celebrate the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul on June 29, totaled $55.3 million in 1999. The money is used both for the pope’s charities and to maintain the Holy See.
Virginia ACLU Sues Over Minute-of-Silence Law
(RNS) The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia has filed a suit claiming the new state law requiring public schools to begin each day with a minute of silence that allows students to pray is unconstitutional.
“Every Virginia legislator knows the purpose of this law,” said Kent Willis, executive director of the Virginia chapter of the ACLU. “It is an attempt to put state-sanctioned prayer back in our public schools, and that is both shameful and unconstitutional.”
Willis said the suit, filed Thursday (June 22) in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., is buoyed by the Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday striking down a Texas school district policy that permitted a student to be elected to lead prayers at football games. The high court said the policy was unconstitutional.
“This is true for moment-of-silence policies as well as school-sponsored prayer at sporting events or graduation ceremonies,” he said in a statement. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of seven public school students and their parents.
A representative of Virginia Attorney General Mark L. Earley could not immediately be reached for comment.
In a recent newspaper interview Earley said public school teachers can mention prayer as an option when instructing students on observing a daily minute of silence.
His advice differed from that of the state Department of Education, which issued guidelines suggesting the daily minute of silence should be introduced with these words: “As we begin another day, let us pause for a moment of silence.”
Earley said teachers can tell pupils about various uses for the minute, listed in legislation passed by the state’s General Assembly earlier this year. The law permits students to “meditate, pray or engage in any other silent activity which does not interfere with … other pupils.”
Presbyterian Church in America: Women Can Teach, Not Preach
(RNS) The Presbyterian Church in America, meeting for its annual general assembly, has approved a policy permitting women to teach _ but not preach _ and adopted a measure permitting a diversity of interpretations regarding the Creation.
The policy concerning women supersedes a 1997 decision by the conservative denomination declaring women could only conduct seminars where the intended audience was other women. The assembly determined that the prohibition in 1 Timothy 2 on women teaching or having authority over men applies to formal worship. That prohibition is “not that of the more informal seminar which is generally more subjective and based on personal experience than is the preaching of the Word in worship.”
The assembly affirmed that women should not preach in public worship, said Dominic Aquila, the denomination’s news officer.
After a lengthy discussion regarding Creation, the assembly approved a motion that eliminated a two-year waiting period and endorsed a committee report acknowledging various viewpoints on the length of days of the Creation. The motion noted that diversity of opinion is “acceptable as long as the full historicity of the Creation account is accepted.”
Commissioners, or delegates, to the denominational meeting in Tampa, Fla., June 20-23 also elected the Rev. Morton H. Smith as the moderator of the assembly. Smith, 76, was the denomination’s first stated clerk.
In other action, the assembly voted overwhelmingly to have its representatives to the National Association of Presbyterian and Reformed Churches propose that the Christian Reformed Church in North America be expelled from the association because it allows ordination of women as pastors and elders.
The assembly also approved a move to express its disagreement with the National Association of Evangelicals, which has changed its bylaws to permit National Council of Churches members to join the evangelical association.
The Presbyterian Church in America, which has about 300,000 members in North America, was founded in 1973. It formed after splitting with a precursor of the more liberal Presbyterian Church (USA).
United Methodist Official Asks Redskins to Change `Offensive’ Name
(RNS) The general secretary of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society has requested that the Washington Redskins consider changing the “offensive” name of the football team.
“The name is offensive and hurtful to the many Native Americans who are citizens of this nation and to all people who reject racial stereotypes and bigotry as socially acceptable,” the Rev. Thom White Wolf Fassett wrote in a letter this month (June) to Washington Redskins President Daniel Snyder.
Fassett, a member of the Seneca tribe, said the 8.4 million-member denomination affirmed at its General Conference in May that sports teams should no longer use “racially charged” names.
“The term `Redskins’ is an insult to Native Americans no matter the context in which it is used,” wrote Fassett. “As a derogatory term which embodies a history of degradation and slaughter, we believe that it should be eliminated as the mascot or slogan for a professional sports team. … You have an opportunity to set an example for the nation by choosing a new team name that instills pride in everyone and does not dismiss anyone as less than human.”
Fassett acknowledges in his letter that it would be difficult to make such a change.
“While we recognize that changing the name of such an organization would not be a simple task and would involve the participation of the National Football League as well as the fans, it is the right thing to do,” he said.
The Washington Redskins could not immediately be reached for comment.
Church of England Reaffirms Opposition to Euthanasia
(RNS) The Church of England has reaffirmed its strong opposition to euthanasia by republishing, with only minor changes, a report first issued 25 years ago, arguing that legalizing euthanasia would give rise to far greater evils than the good it seeks to bring.
Among new material in this edition is the joint submission made in 1993 by the Roman Catholic bishops’ conference of England and Wales and the Church of England’s House of Bishops to the House of Lords select committee on medical ethics.
Bishop Richard Harries of Oxford, chairman of the Church of England’s Board for Social Responsibility, told a news conference Friday (June 23) the joint statement showed that the two churches were “totally of one mind on this issue in opposing euthanasia and trying to get people to think more clearly on the subject.”
He complained that the term “euthanasia” was used far too loosely. “The churches make a very clear and sharp distinction between the relief of pain, which might possibly have the effect of shortening life but which is entirely legitimate, and euthanasia properly so called, which is deliberately trying to kill somebody,” he said.
One of the two new sections of the report covers legal considerations involved in unique cases. The second is a new introduction by Stuart Horner, chairman of the British Medical Association’s ethics committee. Horner cites the Dutch experience with euthanasia, noting the relative lack of hospice care for the dying in the Netherlands. He argues medical decisions resulting in the death of patients can be grouped in two categories: an active decision to end life, either through physician-assisted suicide or physician-assisted death, or an active decision not to prolong life, either by withholding treatment or withdrawing treatment.
Horner also argued that, while an articulate minority would like to see changes in the present legal and medical framework, it would be the poor and disadvantaged who would suffer the consequences.
Two factors differentiate the British debate on euthanasia from that in nations such as the United States: one is the growth of the hospice movement, aimed at providing adequate nursing and proper control of pain for those terminally ill; the other is the absence in the National Health Service of any link between the treatment a doctor prescribes and his or her own financial gain.
Quote of the Day: Chuck Colson, chairman of Prison Fellowship
(RNS) “Have our churches become so accustomed to moral failure that we applaud it? If this is the test of being a good shepherd, should we also endorse pedophiles as pastors so they can better empathize with people who commit child abuse? How far do we carry this preposterous argument?”
_ Prison Fellowship Chairman Chuck Colson, speaking on his “BreakPoint,” radio broadcast about Southern Baptists’ acceptance of the divorce of Charles Stanley, a former Southern Baptist Convention president. He was quoted in the June 22 report of Associated Baptist Press, an independent news service.
DEA END RNS
