c. 1997 Religion News Service

Clinton administration opposes religious persecution bill

(RNS) The Clinton administration has signaled its opposition to proposed legislation that would trigger automatic sanctions against nations found to be persecuting Christians and others on the basis of religion.

During the first of two days of hearings on the proposed bill, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights John Shattuck said the measure could”seriously harm the very people it seeks to help”by prompting reprisals.

Shattuck, speaking Tuesday (Sept. 9) before the House International Relations Committee, said the proposed”Freedom from Religious Persecution Act of 1997″could also hinder dialogue with nations deemed to be religious persecutors and harming relations with key allies who might also fall into that category.

The bill _ which supporters reportedly are trying to rush through the House and Senate by the end of the current congressional session in November _ would establish a White House office to monitor religious persecution abroad. Nations found engaging in religious persecution could lose all U.S. economic aid and trade privileges.

The measure _ introduced in the House by Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and the Senate by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. _ would also ease the way for asylum seekers claiming religious persecution.

Prior to Shattuck’s comments, Wolf told the hearing he hoped the proposed law would lead to a”fundamental departure from `business-as-usual’ human rights policy.” The bill has wide support within the religious community, particularly among conservative Christian groups who say Christians living as minorities abroad are the most persecuted religious believers in the world. They cite China and fundamentalist Muslim nations such as Sudan and U.S.-ally Saudi Arabia as among the chief offenders.

The White House _ which has already established, in accordance with earlier congressional direction, a special State Department commission to review religious persecution abroad _ was expected to oppose the Wolf-Specter legislation.

In introducing the bill, Specter said he expected to have to negotiate the bill’s final wording to alleviate White House concerns.

Mother Teresa grave site picked to thwart vandals

(RNS) The Roman Catholic archbishop of Calcutta said Wednesday (Sept. 10) that Mother Teresa will be buried inside her Missionaries of Charity headquarters to protect her grave from vandals.

Archbishop Henry D’Souza said that Christian cemeteries in India are often subjected to vandalism.”All types of vandalisms are witnessed in our Christian cemeteries,”D’Souza told media representatives when asked at a news conference why Mother Teresa was not being buried at Calcutta’s St. John’s Cemetery, where other Missionaries of Charity nuns have been buried.”To that extent, I am relieved we don’t have to worry about the grave of Mother Teresa,”he said.

Mother Teresa, who died Sept. 5 at age 87, will be buried Saturday (Sept. 13) inside Mother House, her order’s headquarters, following a state funeral. The U.S. Senate has declared Saturday a national day of recognition for Mother Teresa.

Adults, as much as peers, play role in teens’ behavior

(RNS) Teenagers with positive, strong emotional relationships with their parents or teachers are much less likely to use drugs and alcohol, become sexually active or engage in violent behavior, according to a study published Wednesday (Sept. 10) in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The conclusions _ the first findings from a $25 million federally financed study of 90,000 students in grades 7 through 12 _ said that feeling loved, understood and paid attention to by parents helps teens avoid high-risk behaviors regardless of whether the child is from a one-parent or two-parent household.

Those feelings are also more important than the amount of time parents spend at home, according to the study.”These findings offer the parents of America a blueprint for what works in protecting their kids from harm,”said J. Richard Udry, a sociologist at the Carolina Population Center of the University of North Carolina and principal investigator.

While the study included interviews with 20,000 teenagers and 18,000 parents in their homes and is expected to take a decade to completely analyze. It did not look directly at the role of peer pressure in teen decisions to use drugs, engage in sex or take up smoking, but called into question the widespread belief that peer pressure is the most important factor in such decisions.”There’s been a pretty significant myth that peer groups are important and parents are not,”said Robert William Blum of the University of Minnesota and one of the study’s researchers.”We’ve focused so tremendously on peer pressure and instituted so many things to deal with peer pressure,”he added.”And what this study is saying is that family environment matters.” Similarly, in looking at schools, the study found that it did not matter whether a school was public or private when it comes to protecting teens from risky behavior but whether the students felt their teachers cared about them and treated them fairly.

The survey suggests many preventative measures instituted by schools to inhibit risky behavior may be misdirected.”Most of the rules and regulations that schools institute, like suspending students for smoking … don’t seem to have have a significant impact,”Blum said.”We invest heavily in rule development, but that’s not where the action is. The action is in adults’ connecting with kids.”

Amnesty International warns of human rights abuses in Kenya

(RNS) Amnesty International said Wednesday (Sept. 10) it will mobilize its 1 million members to monitor and protest human rights abuses in conflict-torn Kenya _ abuses the non-governmental agency said are likely to increase as national elections draw near.”In theory, Kenya is a democratic state in which Kenyans have freedom of expression and association,”Hilary Fisher, a spokeswoman for the group told a Nairobi news conference unveiling the campaign.”In practice, many of those who criticize the government have been harassed, intimidated or worse.”Opposition politicians and their supporters have been arbitrarily arrested, interrogated and ill-treated. Meetings held by political parties, church groups, civic and human rights organizations have been dispersed by police, sometimes violently.” In July, leaders of Christian and Muslim groups in Kenya called on the government of President Daniel arap Moi to institute long-promised electoral reforms and called for international monitors to watch over elections now expected to be called for sometime in December. The Christian leaders threatened to support a possible boycott of the elections if the reforms were not implemented.

Amnesty, too, called for international election and human rights monitors. There was no immediate government reaction to Amnesty’s news conference, Reuters reported.

Hindus charged in Indian mosque destruction

(RNS) A court in India has indicted 49 people on criminal charges stemming from the 1992 destruction of a 16th-century mosque that sparked Hindu-Muslim riots that left more than 2,000 dead.

The president of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, Lal Krishnan Advani, was among those charged with criminal conspiracy to destroy the Babri mosque in the north India city of Ayodhya, Reuters reported Wednesday (Sept. 10).

Also indicted was Bal Thackeray, leader of the regional Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena party.

Other charges filed included rioting, flamming hatred between Hindus and Muslims, defiling a place of worship and causing grievous harm.

In the 1992 incident, tens of thousands of rioting Hindus destroyed the Babri mosque, which they sought to replace with a Hindu temple. The mosque stood on the site Hindus revere as the birthplace of the Lord Rama, believed by faithful Hindus to be an incarnation of the diety Vishnu.

Those indicted were ordered to appear in court Oct. 17.

Chile’s lower house passes divorce bill despite bishops’ objections

(RNS) The lower house of parliament of overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Chile, acting despite the objections of the nation’s Catholic bishops, has passed a law that will, if enacted, allow divorce for the first time.

The bill, passed late Monday (Sept. 8) night, divided most political parties except those on the left. It would amend Chile’s 113-year-old matrimony law by including the possibility of divorce and establishing grounds for dissolving marriages.

Chilean legislators have tried and failed a dozen times to push a divorce bill through congress in recent years.

The Catholic Church strongly opposed the bill and shortly before the vote called on legislators to”protect higher values”for the sake of Chilean families, Reuters reported. The church said legal divorce would jeopardize the stability of families.

The bill, however, is not expected to go to the senate until next year. The ruling center-left coalition is expected to win control of the senate after mid-term elections in December.

Quote of the day: The Rev. Craig Barnes, National Presbyterian Church

(RNS)”This week, the world lost a princess and a saint. The untimely death of the beautiful, kind, Princess Diana has left us sad. Overwhelmingly sad. But the death of the weathered old saint is almost hard to grieve. Maybe that is because Mother Teresa lived a long life. Maybe it is because she lived so close to God that heaven doesn’t seem that far away. Mother Teresa knew the secrets that Princess Diana was just starting to discover _ salvation is found not in what we gain but in what we let go, not in what we hold but in who we love.” The Rev. Craig Barnes, pastor of National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., in a sermon Sunday, Sept. 7.

MJP END RNS