c. 2004 Religion News Service

World Health Organization: Rites Needed to Grieve Tsunami Victims

(RNS) The World Health Organization said dead bodies from the South Asia tsunami do not present a major health risk, and families should be allowed to proceed with religious burial rites instead of having to endure mass cremations and graves.

The WHO said depriving relatives of funerals for the dead does long-term psychological and emotional harm, and said the health risks posed by dead bodies are exaggerated and misunderstood.

“Survivors will feel more at peace and manage their sense of loss better if they are allowed to follow their beliefs and religious practices and if they are able to identify and recover the remains of their loved ones,” according to a fact sheet released by the Pan American Health Organization, the Washington-based field office of the WHO.

The waves of water created by a Sunday (Dec. 26) earthquake off the coast of Indonesia killed an estimated 114,000 people. Local authorities have begun disposing of the thousands of decomposing bodies in mass graves or cremations, with many victims unidentified.

The WHO said public health risks _ such as cholera or tuberculosis _ are more likely to be spread by living survivors, not cadavers.

An urge to dispose of bodies through mass graves or cremations is “misguided,” the WHO said, and fueled by “short-sighted urgency.”

Hindus and Buddhists routinely cremate bodies, and Jews and Muslims are typically buried in a shroud within 24 hours. Christians are usually buried several days after death and a church funeral.

Vasudha Narayanan, an expert on Hinduism at the University of Florida, said most Hindus would not consider a mass cremation religiously deficient, but said families need the rites to help process their grief.

“It’s ritual, it’s religious, it’s also a way of dealing with grief,” she said. “Obviously nobody wants a mass burial (or cremation), but in times of crisis there’s nothing else people can do.”

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Sri Lankan Bishops Urge Disaster Survivors Not to `Prey on Others’

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Catholic bishops of Sri Lanka, in a statement issued by the Vatican on Thursday (Dec. 30), urged survivors of the country’s tsunami disaster not to “prey on others” but to share what they have with those who are worse off.

The Catholic Bishops Conference in Sri Lanka also called for international aid for the country where a tsunami set off by a massive earthquake Sunday (Dec. 26) claimed more than 20,000 lives.

“The magnitude of the calamity is too heavy for our country to bear alone,” the statement said.

The bishops appealed to survivors “to be calm and law-abiding and to those inclined to prey on others to restrain themselves and not seek to profit from the misfortunes of others.” They urged those who escaped unscathed to “provide material or financial help as well as psychological support to all those who are victims.”

“We ask all our people and Catholics in particular to go to the help of those affected irrespective of the differences in ethnicity or religion,” the statement said. “We are all brothers and sisters and in this tragedy we should display our brotherly love for each other.”

Catholics are a small minority in Sri Lanka, where most of the population is Buddhist and Hindu. The country also has a growing Muslim minority.

The bishops instructed Catholic organizations and parishes to provide disaster relief for areas held by Tamil separatists as well as those under control of the Sinhalese-dominated government.

It said that aid should go to “those affected in whichever part of the country.”

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the government called a truce in 2002 after 20 years of hostilities but have been unable to agree on a peace treaty.

_ Peggy Polk

Christian Agencies Assist Tsunami Victims in Hard-Hit India

(RNS) Church groups and Christian relief agencies have been scrambling to assist tsunami victims in India, where the death toll exceeded 10,000 on Thursday (Dec. 30).

“This is the time we have to extend our hands and help our needy brothers and sisters,” said National Council of Churches in India President Bishop Jeyapaul David from the south Indian city of Tirunelveli, where damage was severe.

Christian groups assisting victims included Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (CRWRC), New Directions International, World Vision and Gospel for Asia.

The post-Christmas devastation is the worst disaster to strike India since the January 2001 earthquake in the western Indian state of Gujarat that killed more than 20,000 people.

CRWRC said it has set aside $30,000 for food, water and supplies for the latest natural calamity.

Bishop Ezra Sargunam, head of the Evangelical Church of India (ECI), said his group has provided 2,000 food packages and plans to ramp up its help to provide one meal to 10,000 victims daily. ECI also plans to provide fishermen fishing gear, nets and boats on a cooperative basis.

Christian humanitarian organization World Vision has set up relief stations on the east and south Indian coasts where the damage was the worst. In coastal Andhra Pradesh, World Vision India is distributing 1,000 food packets a day. In one village, the agency evacuated more than 1,500 people and provided shelter in government schools and a cyclone shelter it built.

Gospel for Asia workers are rushing food, clothing and medical supplies. GFA President K.P. Yohannan says the group’s workers are ministering among the thousands of survivors huddled in massive refugee camps in India.

_ S. David

The Rev. Jacques Dupuis, Jesuit Theologian, Dead at 81

ROME (RNS) The Rev. Jacques Dupuis, an eminent Jesuit theologian who survived a heresy charge brought by the Vatican for his views on religious pluralism, died in a Rome hospital Tuesday (Dec. 28) at age 81.

The Belgian-born Dupuis had lived for many years in India and more recently taught at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He was hospitalized after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage.

Dupuis received a “notification” in 1998 from the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that he was under investigation for heresy in his book “Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism,” published the previous year.

His defenders included Jesuit Father General Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, head of the Society of Jesus; Cardinal Franz Konig of Vienna; and Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, then secretary and now president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue.

The congregation, which is the Vatican’s highest authority on the doctrine of faith and morals, decided to leave the book intact but directed that subsequent editions contain a statement saying that it contains “notable ambiguities and difficulties on important points which could lead a reader to erroneous or harmful opinions.”

Dupuis made a wry reference to the investigation during an 80th birthday celebration at the Gregorian University on Dec. 5, 2003. He said that he was sure that “there is much for me to be grateful for today, be it only the enormous publicity which my writing received through these events.”

“God writes straight with crooked lines, it is said. I like to think that this has happened in my case,” Dupuis commented.

A Jesuit for 63 years, he spent 36 years in India where he began to question the implications of the belief that non-Catholics would be denied salvation because they did not know Jesus and to develop his theology of religious pluralism.

_ Peggy Polk

Liberal Clergy Group Retools Name, Lobbying Status

WASHINGTON (RNS) A fledgling effort to revive the progressive religious icons of the 1960s has a new name, a new tax status and a renewed commitment to organize religious voters in the 2006 midterm elections, officials said.

The Clergy Leadership Network, which started in November 2003 with hopes of providing an alternative voice to religious conservatives, is now called the Clergy and Laity Network. It recently hired Sarah Labowitz, a recent college graduate, as its Washington coordinator.

CLN is no longer a “527” political advocacy group, but is now incorporated like most nonprofit groups with limited ability to conduct issue advocacy and education efforts.

When it debuted last year, CLN attracted liberal luminaries such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Sister Joan Chittister to provide a progressive religious voice in politics, but the group never caught fire and found itself outpaced by established conservative groups.

The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, former general secretary of the National Council of Churches, said the group will refocus on “grass-roots social impact organizing. We connect with people of faith where they live, as voters and active citizens.”

Last year, the Dallas-based Leadership Network, a church think tank, threatened legal action against CLN if it did not change its name. The think tank said the name caused “confusion and adverse reaction” among its clients.

CLN’s first director, the Rev. Brenda Bartella Peterson, left the group last summer to serve as religious outreach director for the Democratic National Committee. She resigned under pressure a week later after she was criticized for supporting the removal of “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Quote of the Day: Sri Lankan Missionary Dayalan Sanders

(RNS) “I said, `Be calm. God is with us. Nothing will ever harm us without his permission.”’

_ Dayalan Sanders, recounting what he told his wife as they gathered 28 orphans into a small boat while watching Sunday’s tsunami approach their orphanage in Navalady, Sri Lanka. The orphanage was destroyed but everyone on the boat survived. He was quoted by The Washington Post.

MO/PH END RNS