c. 1996 Religion News Service

Reproductive rights issue snarls U.N. city summit

(RNS)-A United Nations’ international conference on urban problems stalled on the thorny issue of women’s reproductive rights Thursday (June 13), in a dispute that threatened the signing of a global agreement aimed at making cities more livable in the coming century.

The 113-page agreement is to be the capstone of Habitat II, a 12-day United Nations-sponsored summit that ends Friday (June 14). Negotiators worked through the night to break the abortion impasse.

It aims to create a blueprint for slowing the growth of so-called mega-cities in the developing world and to highlight ways of bringing improved housing and social services to towns and cities in poor nations.

At issue in the abortion debate is whether the final agreement should use language from the 1994 U.N. population conference in Cairo that upholds women’s right to control their own reproduction and have access to family planning, or language from the 1995 U.N. conference on women in Beijing that extends the Cairo statement by saying that women should control their own sexuality and have access to total sexual health care.

Opponents of the Beijing language argue that the phrase”control their own sexuality”is a code word for abortion. Others contend that the idea of sexual rights is contrary to Islam.

The Vatican and some Muslim and predominantly Catholic countries object to using the Beijing language, but the United States, the European Union and some developing countries are refusing to abandon it.

Reuters reported that the start of Friday’s final plenary session was delayed to allow negotiators time to try to resolve differences between the two groups so that a document could be signed at the end of the meeting.”We do deplore the fact that we have to spend too much time on that (reproductive rights) compared to all the useful things that we could have been doing,”said Paolo Coppini, speaking on behalf of the European Union.

But he defended the U.S. and E.U. view, saying,”We think that reproductive health services are an important part of overall health services. These subjects have to be mentioned.” The Vatican, however, criticized countries for insisting on including references to sexual health in the document, arguing they were not relevant to the meeting.

At the beginning of the conference, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the Holy See would not reopen the fight over the reproductive-rights language won by feminist groups in Cairo and Beijing unless other countries brought it up first. Other countries did, and the Vatican joined the fray, helping to block final approval.

Wally N’Dow, the conference’s general secretary, however, pronounced the conference a success even with the wrangling over abortion and sexual health.”We have no doubt that if the agenda is implemented even halfway, the living conditions of the ordinary people in the villages, the hamlets, the towns, the cities, certainly in neighborhoods of the big exploding mega-cities,will improve,”the AP quoted N’Dow.

Update: Clinton invites governors from states with burned churches

(RNS)-Federal officials, from President Clinton to members of Congress, are continuing to seek ways to bring an end to the rash of arsons that have destroyed three dozen black churches, predominantly in the South.

On Thursday (June 13), Clinton invited Southern governors to the White House to consult on a strategy aimed at stopping the arson epidemic.

The invitation for a meeting next week was made through the Southern Governors Association to the heads of nine states where 33 of the 36 fires have occurred. In addition, the governors of New York, New Jersey and Washington, site of three other fires under federal investigation, have been invited.”It is the cruelest of all ironies that an expression of bigotry in America that would sweep this country is one that involves trashing religious liberty,”Clinton said in remarks at the start of a White House meeting on teen-pregnancy.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, the House, by voice vote, adopted a resolution saying the fires”appear to be hate crimes and (they) also implicitly interfere with the First Amendment rights and other civil rights of the victims.” The resolution, which now goes to the Senate, urges prosecutors to seek the maximum penalty for the arsonists.

The House is also scheduled to vote next week on a bill making it easier for federal authorities to investigate and prosecute such cases as the church arsons.

Religious bodies also continued to express their concern about the rash of church arsons.

The gay-oriented Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches said it had a special empathy with the black churches.”We in the Metropolitan Community Churches know what it is like to have our sanctuaries destroyed by hate,”the Rev. Troy Perry, founder of the gay-oriented denomination said in a statement Friday (June 14). He said that many of the denomination’s churches”have been destroyed or damaged by arson and vandalism over the 27 years of our ministry.”There is a clear pattern of racism in the United States today, just as there is a clear pattern of homophobia,”he said.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, meanwhile, announced that it has designated an initial $10,000 to assist in the rebuilding of damaged churches and to aid the National Council of Churches in its investigation of the arsons.

Report: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas returns to Catholic Church

(RNS)-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a lapsed Roman Catholic for the last 25 years, has returned to the Catholic Church, the Washington Times reported Friday (June 14).

The Times said that Thomas, speaking at his 25-year reunion at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass., reported that he took his”first Communion”in St. Joseph’s Chapel on the campus.

Thomas’ account of his return to the faith of his childhood”stunned the audience,”the newspaper quoted one audience member as saying.

In his 20-minute talk, Thomas said he left the Catholic Church after confronting racism in the denomination in the 1960s.

He said his return to the Catholicism has been gradual and cited three former Holy Cross classmates who helped him on the way.

Thomas’ return to Catholicism means that there are now three Roman Catholic justices on the Supreme Court. Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy are Catholic. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer are Jewish. The remaining four justices are Protestant.

Lutherans gingerly return to the issue of human sexuality

(RNS)-The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is drafting another document on human sexuality for its 5.2-million members.

But the new statement, unlike previous documents that met with a firestorm of criticism, will not attempt to spell out policy for the denomination.”It is clear that our purpose is not to develop a new social statement,”said the Rev. Karen Bloomquist, ELCA director for studies.”It is a kind of self-assessment, trying to discern where we as a church are and to do that in a way that can be genuinely helpful for people.” The denomination has been studying issues of human sexuality since 1989. In 1993, a draft of a statement was withdrawn and shelved by the church after it provoked fierce criticism at the grassroots level. Critics complained that the proposed statement encouraged infidelity, was too positive toward homosexuality, and too supportive of such sexual practices as masturbation.

The Rev. Roland Martinson, professor of pastoral theology at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., and an adviser on the new message, said the new statement would be”modest.” But he said the church needs”to say something about who we are are to ourselves in regard to our faith and human sexuality, as well as to say something to the wider culture about what we stand for and what we stand against in terms of constructive and destructive forces around us in society.”The new statement is expected to be presented to the Church Council, the denomination’s highest decision-making body between meetings of its Churchwide Assembly, in November.

Quote of the day: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of Great Britain, on the coming of the millennium

(RNS)-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of Great Britain, spoke recently at Manchester Business School in Manchester, England, on the theme of the coming millennium:”It was the great insight of the Hebrew Bible to see that we encounter God not only in houses of worship and moments of prayer, but also in the grace we bring to personal relationships, the loyalty and fidelity with which we invest commitments like marriage and parenthood, the integrity we show in our business and public lives and the sense of guardianship we bring to nature as creation. The renewal of civil society is a spiritual task-a true challenge for the millennium.”

JC END ANDERSON