c. 1996 Religion News Service

Catholic Charities: Millions of families miss economic boom

(RNS) At a time when politicians were talking about national economic stability and the stock market was beginning its record-climbing ascent, millions of American families were seeking emergency food and shelter from local Catholic agencies, according to a new study by Catholic Charities USA, the nation’s largest network of private, independent social service agencies.

In a survey released Tuesday (Dec. 17), Catholic Charities reported that local agencies served nearly 10.8 million needy people in 1995 _ more than the total population of the Czech Republic. Nearly 7.2 million of those sought emergency food and shelter, while the rest received other basic social services.

The 1995 numbers have changed little from 1994, when 11.1 million people sought social services from Catholic Charities, the survey found.”Millions of families are being left out of the economic good times. Economic stability has not made a dent in the level of emergency needs of low-income families, whether they work or not,”said the Rev. Fred Kammer, president of Catholic Charities USA, at a Washington news conference to release the report.

The report, which was prepared by the Washington-based Urban Institute think tank, found that nearly half of the more than 7 million people seeking emergency food and shelter were not on welfare.”A job doesn’t necessarily get you out of poverty,”Kammer said.

Catholic leaders warned that welfare reform and new budget cuts will only make the situation worse.”We at Catholic Charities are stunned by the unequal share of the federal budget cuts that poor families will suffer,”said Sharon Daly, deputy to the president for social policy.

Daly said”the poorest and most fragile 15 percent of the American people will bear 93 percent of the burden”of the cuts.

In 1995, Catholic Charities spent $1.93 billion on social services. More than $400 million of that total came from private donations. The group had more than 52,000 staff members and more than 239,000 volunteers.

However, Kammer said his organization worries about whether it can adequately sustain its efforts.”Giving to private charities would have to more than double next year to make up for government cuts. That is not likely when giving to human services actually went down in five of the last six years, including 1995,”Kammer said.

Daly urged Congress and President Clinton to take steps to”ease the unfair pain being inflicted on America’s poorest families in the race to balance the budget.”

Group urges `Christian principles’ in Russia’s public life

(RNS) A new political movement, the All-Russian Christian Union, has been formed in Moscow with the aim of becoming Russia’s first serious Christian political movement.

Earlier efforts to begin Christian-based political organizations have foundered on the margins of the political process because they were too exclusively linked with Protestant circles or because they took”extreme nationalist and monarchist positions,”according to Mikhail Men, a key organizer of the new organization.

Men is a member of the Russian Duma, or parliament, and is the son of Alexander Men, the prominent Russian Orthodox preacher and ecumenical theologian who was murdered in 1990 in circumstances which are still unknown.

In the Duma, Men is associated with a band of liberal lawmakers committed to democratic reforms led by Grigory Yavlinsky.”We are attempting to organize something centrist, with an accent on (religious) Orthodoxy, but open to other confessions … so that people of democratic convictions for whom Christian principles are the cornerstone of their lives, can influence the public life of the country,”Men told Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.

The new group is an effort to form a democratic response to efforts to mobilize Christianity, especially Russian Orthodoxy, for more nationalistic and totalitarian ends.”This organization is aimed at consolidating all the constructive forces to counterbalance the attempts to use Orthodoxy as a cover for various totalitarian ideologies,”according to Professor Anatoli Krasikov, head of the Center for Problems of Religion and Society.

The new movement will have no organizational ties to the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Patriarch Alexi II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, sent a carefully worded message to the founding conference in which he stressed the non-involvement of the church in”political parties, movements, unions and other similar organizations.”

Kirk Franklin is big winner at Stellar Gospel Music Awards

(RNS) Gospel singer Kirk Franklin walked away with five prizes at the recent 12th Annual Stellar Gospel Music Awards.

The ceremony, held Dec. 12 in Nashville, honored contemporary gospel musicians.

Kirk Franklin & The Family’s”Whatcha Lookin’ 4″won Contemporary Album of the Year and Urban Gospel Performance of the Year. Franklin also won Artist of the Year and Producer of the Year for”Whatcha Lookin’ 4″and Song of the Year for”Melodies from Heaven.” Other winners included: Album of the Year, the Rev. Clay Evans & the AARC Mass Choir for”I’ve Got a Testimony”; Female Vocalist of the Year, Dottie Peoples for”Count on God”; Male Vocalist of the Year, Doug Williams for”Heart Songs”; Choir of the Year, Mississippi Mass Choir for”I’ll See You in the Rapture”; Group of the Year, The Canton Spirituals for”Live in Memphis II”; New Artist of the Year, Colorado Mass Choir for”Watch God Move.”

Church fire trials begin in Indonesia

(RNS) Five Indonesians, accused of taking part in a riot in October during which five people died and 25 Christian churches were burned, went on trial in Indonesia on Monday (Dec. 16), reported Antara, the official Indonesian news agency.

Antara said the five are accused of intentionally lighting fires and damaging buildings, Reuters reported. If convicted, the five could receive penalties of up to 12 years in jail. There was no indication from Antara how long the trial might last.

The five were identified only by their initials.

The riot broke out when a mostly Muslim crowd, unhappy with the verdict in a court case involving a Muslim accused of blasphemy, went on a rampage.

A total of 53 people are expected to be tried on charges relating to the riot and the subsequent deaths and torching of the churches.

Christian relief promotes `civil society’ in Honduras, Lebanon (RNS) The Christian relief group Mercy Corps has received a $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development to help strengthen”civil society”in Honduras and Lebanon.

According to the Portland, Ore.-based organization, the civil society program will incorporate”issues of human rights, conflict resolution and economic security.””Civil society efforts are about mending the social fabric so that our daily work in relief and development has a chance to take root,”said Lowell Ewert, Mercy Corps’ director of Civil Society.

The pilot projects in Honduras and Lebanon will promote citizen participation, government accountability and conflict mediation, Mercy Corps said. Work will center on rebuilding war-damaged areas, helping citizen movements to organize and providing conscription-age boys alternatives to joining gangs.

Ewert said building such programs is a necessary but neglected part of relief and development work.”We commit humanitarian malpractice if we ignore the evidence that a lack of civil society spurs poverty, famine, abuses against women and minorities, and refugee flows,”he said.

Karen Peterson Miller to be Brethren’s interim general secretary

(RNS) Karen Peterson Miller, director of District Ministry for the Church of the Brethren, has been named interim general secretary of the 144,000-member denomination, succeeding Donald Miller (no relation), who has retired.

She will take over as the denomination’s top day-to-day official in Elgin, Ill., on Jan. 1 and retain the position until a new general secretary is named.

But church officials said the search for a new permanent general secretary has been temporarily suspended as the denomination completes a restructuring of its General Board, or national offices.

As director of District Ministry, Miller oversees the hiring of the denomination’s 23 district executives and works with district leaders in implementing programs.

She has been granted a leave of absence from that job for up to one year.

Miller previously served in the national offices of the church as editor of study resources, where she edited adult and youth curriculum.

Miller is an ordained pastor in the denomination and earned her ministry of divinity degree from Bethany Theological Seminary.

The Church of the Brethren was formed in 1708 when the Brethren movement began in central Germany. It is one of the historic peace churches, conscientiously opposed to all war.

Quote of the day: Pope John Paul II

(RNS) Pope John Paul II released his annual World Peace Day message Tuesday (Dec. 17), calling for the granting of amnesties after armed conflict as a way to bring about reconciliation in strife-torn nations and welcomed the establishment of various”truth commissions”around the world:”Offering and accepting forgiveness is the essential condition for making the journey toward authentic and lasting peace. … The evil which has been done must be acknowledged and as far as possible corrected. … When such forgiveness is lacking, wounds continue to fester, fueling in the younger generation endless resentment, producing a desire for revenge and causing fresh destruction.”

MJP END RNS