c. 2000 Religion News Service
Sexual Abstinence Advocates Barred From Chicago Schools
(RNS) A group advocating sexual abstinence and linked to the Unification Church has been barred from presenting its curriculum in Chicago public schools.
School administrators learned the Pure Love Alliance had presented the curriculum in sex education classes without proper approval, The Washington Post reported.
The alliance said it presented its abstinence program in 61 Chicago schools during the last school year with consent of local teachers. It also made presentations in Alabama, Los Angeles and Miami.
The organization kicked off a nationwide promotional tour of 300 avowed celibate teen-agers on Wednesday (July 19) in Chicago.
Several groups, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, have opposed the program, saying it is based on a curriculum that is unsound and targets black communities with a message of “fear and shame.” Others have expressed concern that the involvement of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church members violates the separation of church and state.
Robert Kittel, president of the Pure Love Alliance, said school officials banned the program because its instructors are Unification Church members.
The Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health, which supports comprehensive sex education and not abstinence only, said the Pure Love program promotes, among other things, “absolute sex,” which the caucus said was defined by the church as sexual relations exclusively with a spouse assigned by the church.
“Our students need an education that gives them complete information about health, not an opportunity for religious recruitment,” said Jenny Knauss, executive director of the caucus.
Kittel said his group does not teach “absolute sex,” but he admitted the term is used in some of its literature. Since the term is “causing confusion,” he said it will be deleted from publications of the Pure Love Alliance.
“Arranged marriages are not part of our program,” he said.
Anniversary of Falun Gong Crackdown Draws Protests
(RNS) On the one-year anniversary of China’s crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement, Falun Gong supporters in the United States gathered Thursday (July 20) in Washington to denounce China’s treatment of members of the outlawed group.
“On behalf of the millions of Falun Gong practitioners in China, we ask only to have the opportunity to speak face-to-face with government officials in China, to sit down and come to a mutual understanding,” said Falun Gong spokeswoman Gail Rachlin. “We hope that the government leaders will see that not only is it in the best interest of practitioners, but it also is in their own best interest to mend this schism in the nation.”
Thousands of practitioners have been arrested or detained since July 1999 when China banned Falun Gong (a blend of traditional Chinese slow-motion exercises and Buddhist and Taoist principles that practitioners say promotes good health) as a menace to public order, Rachlin said. Human rights organizations report that some 24 Falun Gong followers have died while in police custody.
“China must be held to the same standards as all United Nations members,” Rachlin said. “We appeal to all U.N. member states to speak out on this important issue of human rights, defend the rule of law, and urge the Chinese leadership to cease the persecution of its own citizens.”
In China, similar anniversary demonstrations Thursday (July 20) and Friday (July 21) were quickly dispersed by police. About 15 protesters were detained Friday (July 21) in Tiananmen Square, one day after 90 other followers were arrested at the same site, Reuters news agency reported.
Police in Hong Kong on Friday (July 21) detained four Chinese Falun Gong practitioners living in Japan who had expired visitors’ permits. Officials insist, however, that the four were not targeted because of their membership in Falun Gong.
A day earlier in Hong Kong, about 120 practitioners gathered outside the Chinese Embassy to demand that China release detained Falun Gong followers and revoke an arrest warrant issued for Falun Gong’s founder.
British Archbishop Defends Handling of Pedophile Priest Case
(RNS) The 15-year-old case of a pedophile priest handled by the leading Roman Catholic archbishop in England has been resurrected in the British tabloids by someone who has been feeding details of the case to the media.
The case involved the Rev. Michael Hill, who was sentenced in 1997 to five years in prison for sexual offenses involving boys. Hill served in three parishes in Surrey and Sussex before Archbishop Cormac Murphy-O’Connor removed him from parish work in 1983.
In 1985 Murphy-O’Connor _ who was then serving as bishop in a small diocese _ was advised that Hill might be able to work “in some restricted pastoral work outside a parish,” and he was appointed chaplain at Gatwick airport outside London.
In a lengthy statement, Murphy-O’Connor said Wednesday (July 19) that some issues regarding Hill’s behavior had been raised before he was removed from parish ministry.
“My reaction was to challenge him and require him to undergo assessment and counseling,” the archbishop said. “It was only in 1983 that allegations of a specific and more serious nature were made, and I immediately took action, removing Fr. Hill from the parish and ensuring that he received further professional assessment and later therapy.
“In the light of the assessment, I withdrew his license to work in a parish, and for 18 months he worked in a commercial office.”
Murphy-O’Connor pointed out that if the “strict procedures” for child protection introduced by the Roman Catholic Church in 1994 had been in operation then, things would have been handled differently.
“I maintain that, with the facts then known to me, the decisions made at that time in his regard were not irresponsible,” he said.
He added that he was still surprised by “the amount of genuine ignorance” about the compulsive nature of child abuse that existed in the mid-1980s not only among bishops and priests “but also in society at large, including the medical profession.”
Murphy-O’Connor also repeated his “distress and concern” for Hill’s victims, echoing a statement he made after Hill’s trial when he said he was “ashamed” that these incidents took place.
In an out-of-court settlement, the diocese has paid compensation to the victims. Interviewed by the BBC, Murphy-O’Connor said, “When I appointed him to Gatwick airport I believed at the time that this was a low-risk place for him to exercise a limited ministry. In the light of what we know now, that was a mistake.”
One of Hill’s victims was a boy with learning difficulties who had missed his flight from Gatwick and whom the priest met in the airport chapel.
Former NCC Executive Named President of Job Training Group
(RNS) The Rev. Staccato Powell, former deputy general secretary of the National Council of Churches, has been named president and chief executive officer of a prominent work force training organization.
Powell will lead Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America, a Philadelphia-based organization that trains disadvantaged and unemployed people.
The Rev. Leon H. Sullivan, founder and chairman of the board, announced Powell’s appointment on Wednesday (July 19), the day after the organization concluded a training and employment conference in Philadelphia.
Powell, who was an official in NCC’s National Ministries Unit, has been a pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church for 22 years. He has served on boards and committees of the denomination and of the World Council of Churches.
Church of England Pressed to Build More Secondary Schools
(RNS) The Church of England is being challenged to build 100 more secondary schools to increase the availability of Christian education for older students.
For historical reasons all but 180 of the Church of England’s 4,774 schools are primary schools. That means that while there are 790,000 places for pupils in Church of England primary schools, there are places for only 150,000 at the secondary level.
An interim report published Thursday (July 20) by a church panel to review the situation has recommended that each of the church’s 43 dioceses should consider expanding its secondary school programs by two additional secondary schools, while those dioceses with none should aim for three.
This could be done either by building new schools or expanding existing ones, and it would mean the equivalent of an additional 100 church-sponsored secondary schools.
Under the system of voluntary aided schools set up by the 1944 Education Act, the church would have to find up to 15 percent of the initial capital cost of a new school and 15 percent of its running costs.
Building a new school could cost up to 2 million pounds ($3 million). The report argued that most church schools served a “much wider community” than children of church members. This meant that the network of church schools “brings many more adults into a relationship with the practice of the Christian faith than attend church services.”
The number of children and teen-agers currently in church-sponsored schools is “about five times the number of children currently counted as attending Sunday services in church.” The report noted that seven dioceses currently have no church secondary schools, while an additional seven dioceses have only one each.
The Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales is educating more than 400,000 pupils in its nearly 1,900 primary schools and nearly 300,000 pupils in just under 400 secondary schools.
Quote of the Day: Southern Baptist Missionary Mark Harvey
(RNS) “The only word that came to mind was `overwhelming’: overwhelming tragedy, overwhelming need, overwhelming opportunity to make a difference for the glory of God.”
Southern Baptist missionary Mark Harvey, discussing how Southern Baptists are responding to relief needs of Filipinos who survived the July 10 collapse of a huge trash dump in a suburb of Manila, the Philippines.
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