c. 2000 Religion News Service
Family Research Council Condemns Hindu Prayer in Congress
(RNS) The Family Research Council has condemned the inclusion of a Hindu priest among guests giving the invocation in the House of Representatives.
“Alas, in our day, when `tolerance’ and `diversity’ have replaced the 10 Commandments as the only remaining absolute dictums, it has become necessary to `celebrate’ non-Christian religions _ even in the halls of Congress,” the conservative Christian public policy group said in a “CultureFacts” weekly publication that was e-mailed Thursday (Sept. 21) to subscribers.
“And while it is true that the United States of America was founded on the sacred principle of religious freedom for all, this liberty was never intended to exalt other religions to the level that Christianity holds in our country’s heritage.”
Venkatachalapathi Samuldrala, a Hindu priest from Ohio, on Sept. 14 became the first Hindu to offer an opening prayer in the House. His prayer was timed to coincide with the special joint session address by Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
“Our founders expected that Christianity _ and no other religion _ would receive support from the government as long as that support did not violate people’s consciences and their right to worship,” the Washington-based FRC continued.
“They would have found utterly incredible the idea that all religions, including paganism, be treated with equal deference.”
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a religious liberty watchdog group, made public the comments by FRC.
“The FRC’s attack reeks of religious bigotry,” said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of the Washington-based Americans United. “This is an outrageous act of prejudice and it should be condemned by decent people everywhere.”
Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts Accused of Gender Bias
(RNS) A former Episcopal priest has sued the Diocese of Massachusetts, alleging that gender-based discrimination hindered her pay and career path.
Sandy Williams of Danvers, Mass., is seeking back pay and punitive damages in federal district court, according to her attorney, David Angueira.
Williams said she worked as a parish priest in Massachusetts from 1989 to 1997.
The case brings into focus the question of whether the separation of church and state exempts churches from anti-discrimination laws that juries have concluded bind other entities. On that question, the two sides disagree.
“It’s the same problem (of gender-based discrimination) that we see repeatedly in private corporations,” Angueira said. “Yet because these are church organizations, people have been reluctant to come forward. … The bottom line is: Are they privileged enough to say they’re not bound by the law? I would say no.”
“Once you sign the (church’s) oath of conformity, you abrogate your rights under the (U.S.) Constitution,” said diocese spokesman Ed Rodman. He declined to comment on the merits of Williams’ allegations, but noted that in three recent suits against the diocese, Massachusetts courts have deemed the church to be beyond state jurisdiction.
Williams said she realized taking the church to court would end her career as a priest, but she felt obliged to pursue justice.
“When you have no accountability from the top, you have to go elsewhere,” Williams said. “I can’t believe our legal system is without divine guidance.”
Williams is now a third-year law student at the Massachusetts School of Law.
U.N. Urges Iraqi Christians to Seek Asylum in Mexico
(RNS) U.N. officials are urging more than 100 Iraqi Christians seeking asylum in the United States to first apply for asylum in Mexico, where they have been detained by immigration authorities.
“The position of the U.N. actually is if they don’t ask for political asylum in Mexico, the representative of the U.N. (in Baja California) can’t do anything for them,” said Eduardo de la Pena, a spokesman for the U.N. office in Tijuana, Mexico, where some 150 Iraqi Chaldeans who fear religious persecution in their native country have been gathering for the past few months. “It is quickest if they ask for asylum first in Mexico and then try to get to the U.S.”
The Iraqi refugees were detained in Tijuana on Wednesday (Sept. 20), the same day 77 other Iraqi Chaldeans were taken into custody by U.S. immigration officials after they tried to enter the United States from Mexico without visas.
The refugees in Mexico had planned to seek asylum in that country if their applications for asylum were denied by the United States, one relative told the Associated Press.
One Iraqi already had documents from U.S. officials that granted him asylum, but officials in Mexico refused to release him immediately, de la Pena said.
San Diego and the surrounding region _ about 30 minutes from Tijuana _ is home to the United States’ second-largest Chaldean community. An estimated 15,000 Chaldeans live in San Diego County. The majority of the nation’s 120,000 Chaldeans live in the Detroit region.
About 172 Iraqi Chaldeans have filed asylum requests at the San Ysidro, Calif., border, compared to almost none last year, said Robert Looney, the regional asylum director for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Iraq is home to about half of the 800,000 Chaldeans worldwide.
The Chaldeans, sometimes called Nestorians or Assyrians, are an ancient Christian sect who separated from other Christians at the time of the Council of Epheseus in 431 over the use of the term “Theotokos,” or God-bearer, to describe Mary, the mother of Jesus. The Chaldeans, however, are in communion with the Roman Catholic Church.
Vatican Insists Canonization of 120 Chinese Martyrs Is Not Political
(RNS) Rejecting sharp criticism from Beijing, the Vatican insisted Friday (Sept. 22) it decided to canonize 120 Chinese martyrs on Sunday (Oct. 1), which is China’s National Day, for religious and not political reasons.
Chief Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said at a Vatican briefing the fact that China will celebrate the 51st anniversary of Communist rule on Sunday did not enter into the Vatican’s decision, which he said was based on the church calendar of feast days. “The choice was purely religious,” he said.
“Because of the presence of missionaries among the martyrs and of the missionary history of evangelization in China, it was decided that these canonizations would take place on the first day of the month of October on the feast day of St. Teresa of Lisieux, patron of missions,” he said.
The candidates for sainthood were martyred between 1607 and 1930, well before the Communists took power in 1949. Many died at the turn of the century in the Boxer Rebellion, which Christian missionary work helped to provoke.
But the Chinese government, which established its own patriotic Catholic church in 1957, forcing Catholics loyal to the Vatican underground, reacted with anger in a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday (Sept. 20).
“This act by the Vatican is extremely hurtful to the feelings of the Chinese people and to the dignity of the Chinese nation and absolutely will not be tolerated by the government and people of China,” the statement said.
Navarro-Valls said the Vatican had “no desire to politicize or diplomatize the date.” He said that in setting the date it took into consideration only “ecclesial questions important to the church both in Rome and China.”
The spokesman said the Vatican also rejected China’s assertion that the list of future saints had been presented by Taiwan and its charge that one of the candidates, Auguste Chapdelaine, a French missionary priest decapitated in 1856, was “anti-Chinese.”
Navarro-Valls noted that, starting in 1943, the Vatican received 57 letters formally proposing sainthood for the first of the martyrs, Francisco Fernandez de Capillas, a Dominican monk tortured and beheaded in 1648. He said the letters came from Spain, Portugal, the Philippines, Japan and mainland China as well as Taiwan.
The so-called causes of the 120 candidates began separately over the 90-year period between 1893 and 1983, he said.
Demanding that Beijing furnish “concrete, documentary evidence” of Chapdelaine’s anti-Chinese sentiments, the spokesman said anti-government charges against Catholics date back to ancient Rome when they were accused of being “anti-Caesar.”
The candidates for sainthood include 87 Chinese, 83 of them lay men and women, and 33 missionaries from Spain, France, Italy, Belgium and Holland.
Pope John Paul II also will canonize three other women, including Katharine Drexel, a native of Philadelphia, who established a religious order that aides African and Native Americans.
Scottish Nun Found Guilty of Cruelty to Children
(RNS) Claims for compensation from former residents of Roman Catholic children’s homes in Scotland are expected following the conviction at Aberdeen Sheriff Court on Tuesday (Sept. 19) of 58-year-old Sister Marie Docherty on four charges of cruelty to children at homes run by the Sisters of Nazareth.
The jury of nine women and six men found three other charges not proven, while the sheriff ruled that there was insufficient evidence to proceed on 16 other charges that the nun originally faced.
The charges concerned events between 1965 and 1980.
Sister Marie will be sentenced Sept. 28 after the court has received a medical report. She suffered a heart condition during the trial, which began Aug. 14.
Three hundred and forty people are reported to be claiming damages from the Sisters of Nazareth, with another 80 wanting to sue the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent dePaul. The Glasgow solicitor who is representing them, Cameron Fyfe, said he is ready to proceed with 11 test cases at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.
A church statement said that, while legally the case was a matter for the Sisters of Nazareth, “as a church we are deeply ashamed that anyone entrusted to any church personnel suffered in any way.” In recent years the church has introduced child protection guidelines intended to ensure that no child would come to harm.
New Church World Service Executive Confirmed
(RNS) The new director of Church World Service, the humanitarian arm of the National Council of Churches, was approved by the agency’s board of directors in a vote on Sept. 13.
The Rev. John L. McCullough, a United Methodist pastor from Montclair, N.J., was named interim director in June, but his permanent appointment needed approval from the CWS board of directors.
McCullough previously served as associate secretary of the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church. He succeeds the Rev. Rodney I. Page, who stepped down from the post in May following four years as head of the agency.
“We believe that the Rev. McCullough has the vision, leadership skills and passion for God’s mission to lead us `for such a time as this,”’ said the Rev. Liberato C. Bautista, who headed the search committee to find Page’s replacement.
Edward O. Miller, Episcopal Activist, Dies at 84
(RNS) The Rev. Edward O. Miller, the longtime voice of liberal mainline Protestantism who challenged and cherished the Episcopal Church, died Sept. 16 in Bangor, Maine. He was 84.
Miller served as rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan from 1946 to 1975 and became a leading advocate of the progressive social agenda that came to define the mainline church in America.
After the 1963 Supreme Court decision that banned state-sponsored prayer in public schools, Miller joined the American Civil Liberties Union in opposing congressional efforts to overturn the decision.
“Basically, the First Amendment was adopted because the founding fathers believed that religion flourishes best where it is the responsibility of the church and the home, that religion thrives where it is voluntary and not dependent on the coercive power of the state,” Miller told a congressional panel, according to The New York Times.
Miller later challenged the Episcopal Church hierarchy on several central tenets of the Christian faith and refused to read a letter from the church’s House of Bishops affirming the value of the Nicean and Apostles’ Creeds, saying the document was full of “pious religious jargon.”
Miller is survived by his wife, a daughter and three sons, six grandchildren and a sister.
Quote of the day: Paul Spiegel, German Jewish leader
(RNS) “What has changed, however, is the openness with which anti-Semitism is now expressed. Many anti-Semites found it inopportune to express their anti-Semitism 10 years ago. Today, they express it.”
_ Paul Spiegel, leader of Germany’s Jewish community, in a Sept. 21 speech marking the 50th anniversary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, on the breakdown of the postwar taboo on voicing anti-Semitic sentiments. He was quoted by the Associated Press.
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