c. 2003 Religion News Service
NCC Leader Rebukes Malaysian Prime Minister
(RNS) Recent anti-Semitic comments by the Muslim prime minister of Malaysia endanger Islam’s claims to peace and threaten Jews with violence, the head of the National Council of Churches said.
The Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the ecumenical body of 36 mainline and Orthodox churches, rebuked Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad for saying that “Jews rule the world by proxy.”
“You cannot truthfully claim to be advocating nonviolent means when your comments incite anti-Semitism, creating a climate conducive to violent acts,” Edgar wrote to Mohamad on Monday (Oct. 20).
Mohamad, speaking to the Organization of the Islamic Conference on Oct. 16, said Jews “have now gained control of the most powerful countries” and “get others to fight and die for them.”
Mohamad said actions by Israel and other Western nations threaten Muslims and called on the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims to swear off violence. “Is there no other way than to ask our young people to blow themselves up and kill people and invite the massacre of more of our own people?”
One day later, Mohamad defended his comments, saying Christians such as the Rev. Jerry Falwell are not reprimanded for calling the Prophet Mohammed a “terrorist.” “If Muslims can be accused of being terrorists, then others can accuse Jews of being terrorists also,” he said.
On Monday, President Bush personally told Mohamad his remarks were “wrong and divisive” and stand “squarely against what I believe in” in a meeting of Pacific Rim leaders in Bangkok, according to The New York Times.
Edgar said the NCC has “consistently condemned remarks that malign the Muslim community and, similarly, we have consistently condemned comments that malign the Jewish community.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Victims Agree to $85 Million Settlement With Boston Archdiocese
(RNS) A landmark $85 million settlement between the Archdiocese of Boston and 552 victims of clergy sexual abuse can proceed now that it has been approved by at least 80 percent of the victims, lawyers said Monday (Oct. 20).
Plaintiffs have until Thursday (Oct. 23) to sign the out-of-court settlement. Lawyers told The Boston Globe they expect about 98 percent of victims to sign the deal.
Under the agreement brokered by newly installed Archbishop Sean O’Malley, victims will receive between $80,000 and $300,000 after telling their stories to a mediation team.
“The Archdiocese of Boston remains committed to doing everything we can to work to bring about healing, reconciliation and peace for those who have been abused and for all who have been affected by this terrible scandal,” O’Malley said in a statement.
The agreement required consent from at least 80 percent of plantiffs in order for it to take effect. Victims who opt out of the agreement will take their cases to court.
“The bottom line is, as of right now, the only other option is to go to court, and I’m not sure who that’s going to help,” Gary Bergeron, who claims he was abused by a priest in the 1970s, told the Associated Press.
Victims’ lawyers, however, said the process is far from over. “It is still very difficult for these people to dredge up all the terrible things that happened to them, and they are laboring to prepare for the arbitration,” attorney Jeffrey Newman told The Globe.
Patricia Ireland Fired as YWCA’s CEO
(RNS) Patricia Ireland has been fired as the chief executive officer of the YWCA, a position she held for less than six months.
“We have the deepest admiration for Ms. Ireland’s dedication to women’s issues and social justice, but the YWCA has proved to be the wrong platform for her to advocate for these issues,” said Audrey Peeples, chairman of the YWCA’s national coordinating board, in a statement.
Ireland has been succeeded by Dorris Daniel-Parkes, who will act as interim director, the organization announced Oct. 16.
Conservative Christian organizations had criticized the hiring of Ireland, a well-known feminist and the former longtime president of the National Organization for Women.
“Patricia Ireland is wrong and all this murky talk about `wrong platform’ is pure spin,” said Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, in a statement.
Lafferty called Ireland “a liberal extremist” whose views are in conflict with “soccer moms.”
The YWCA, which originally was called the Young Women’s Christian Association, provides child-care services and after-school programs to more than 750,000 children nationwide. It also provides shelters for women and families and runs violence prevention programs.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Archbishop of Canterbury Reiterates Misgiving on Iraq War
LONDON (RNS) Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has reiterated his strong misgivings about the Iraq war in a section of an interview with BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program that was not aired last weekend.
Williams was interviewed by the radio program Friday after the emergency meeting of Anglican primates, called to deal with the crisis in the Anglican Communion on the issue of homosexuality.
Williams’ aides said it was their understanding the archbishop would not be asked about Iraq during the interview. He was, but that portion was not aired. The Guardian newspaper published a transcript of the unaired portion of the interview Saturday (Oct. 18).
Pressed by interviewer John Humphrys to say whether the war was immoral, Williams, after a lengthy pause, responded, “It seems to be that the action in Iraq was one around which there were so many questions about long-term results, about legal justification, that I would find it very hard to give unqualified support to the rightness of that decision.”
When Humphrys pointed out he had hesitated for a very long time before answering, Williams _ whose hesitation, according to church sources, was due to surprise that the question had come up _ said: “Immoral is a short word for a very, very long discussion.”
Before the war began, Williams was among the signatories of a statement saying a pre-emptive strike against Iraq would be immoral.
In the interview, he said while the war was being waged he had tried to respect what was going on “and not to make idle or armchair pontifications about it.” Since the end of military operations, “I have been reflecting on where we are now, and my view is still that there are major questions about that enterprise.”
_ Robert Nowell
Ricardo Montalban Honored by Catholics in Media
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (RNS) Actor Ricardo Montalban was given the Life Achievement Award on Sunday (Oct. 19) at the 11th annual Catholics In Media Associates (CIMA) awards, which also honored the movie “Seabiscuit” and the NBC family drama “American Dreams.”
“My religion, my Catholicity, is the most important thing in my life,” said the 82-year-old Montalban, who appeared on the Beverly Hilton Hotel stage in a wheelchair, as he suffers from severe leg ailments that have left him 80 percent paralyzed in one leg. The Mexico City-born star of the 1970s TV hit “Fantasy Island,” who also was one of MGM’s “Latin lover” movie stars, said that words like purity, innocence, modesty and accountability “are superfluous today,” but that faith and his family have anchored him.
The annual CIMA awards combine a Catholic Mass, a brunch and an awards ceremony into a four-hour Sunday gathering, which this year attracted about 500 people including actress Bonnie Hunt and actor Joe Campanella. Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, a regular CIMA attendee, did not attend because he was in Rome for Pope John Paul II’s 25th anniversary celebrations.
Actor and master of ceremonies Stacy Keach, an Episcopalian, said that after almost two decades of marriage to his Polish-born Catholic wife, he is converting. “I have decided to make the change,” he told the CIMA crowd.
“American Dreams” executive producer Jonathan Prince accepted his CIMA TV award after publicly thanking the hotel brunch’s waiters and busboys and then noting that he was a Jewish kid growing up in Beverly Hills with “four sisters in a very loud, very chaotic family.” That upbringing allowed Prince to understand the “American Dreams” central, sometimes loud, somewhat chaotic Irish-Catholic family, the Pryors, living in 1960s Philadelphia.
“Family shows are not en vogue _ entertainment that is safe for the family to watch together,” he said.
“American Dreams” has modern parallels as families now are concerned about their children fighting in Iraq, not unlike the show’s Pryor family worried about their son in Vietnam. “If that sounds familiar,” Prince said, “then I think I’ve done my job.”
Universal Pictures’ summer racehorse epic, “Seabiscuit,” received the CIMA movie honor, with the film’s writer/director/producer Gary Ross saying “Seabiscuit” was “a populist movie _ thank goodness it was also a popular movie.”
_ David Finnigan
Quote of the Day: Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod President Gerald B. Kieschnick
(RNS) “Thankfully, no matter how far secular zealots go in erasing the signs and symbols of God and faith in our culture, they will never fully succeed. They may inhibit public prayer and remove monuments and manger scenes from courthouses and city halls; they may even delete “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, but they can never erase God’s law from the hearts of men.”
_ The Rev. Gerald B. Kieschnick, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, reacting in a commentary to recent controversies about the Ten Commandments and the Pledge of Allegiance.
DEA END RNS
