c. 1998 Religion News Service

Greek Orthodox Church denies report archbishop has been replaced

(RNS) Greek Orthodox Church dissidents Friday (Aug. 28) reported on their Web site that the embattled head of the church’s American branch has been reassigned. A spokesman for Archbishop Spyridon denied any such action had occurred.

Father Mark Arey, communications director for the New York-based Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, called the Voithia Web site report”Internet graffiti”and”absolutely not true.””I categorically deny that their story is true and I think they should be ashamed for putting the story out,”Arey said.

However, Harry Coin of Newton, Mass., who posted the story, said he stood by his report, for which he cited an unnamed source.

Editors and writers at two Greek-American newspapers said Friday they found no evidence to support the Voithia report.

According to Voithia, a Web site operated by Coin and other members of the dissident group Greek Orthodox American Leaders (GOAL), the decision to replace Spyridon was made Thursday in Istanbul, Turkey, by the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The synod is the highest ruling body of the patriarchate, under whose jurisdiction the 1.5-million American church falls.

The report said Spyridon had been assigned to the Greek island of Rhodes and will be temporarily replaced by Metropolitan Ioakim _ the second highest official in the patriarchate hierarchy and the church leader who officiated at the 1996 ceremony at which Spyridon was installed as archbishop. The report said a permanent replacement would be named in December.

Spyridon, who has come under fire from GOAL for what the group sees as his heavy-handed management style and improper financial dealings, is currently in Istanbul for an international meeting of Orthodox leaders affiliated with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.

GOAL repeatedly has urged the patriarch, who selected Spyridon to head the American church, to replace him.

The archdiocese has dismissed GOAL as a small group of church troublemakers. GOAL insists its support within the American Greek church is substantial and that Spyridon, although American born, is out of step with the needs of lay members in the contemporary Greek Orthodox Church.

Friday’s Voithia report capped a week of rumors in the Greek and Greek-American press concerning Spyridon’s future.

Sister act _ learning rock, rap and techno for youth ministry

(RNS) Music, some say, is a universal language.

In Rome, some 90 Salesian nuns tested that assertion by taking part in a three-day seminar on rock, funk, techno, rap and other youth trends in order to better communicate with young people in their teaching and social work.”It’s fun to take part in this seminar,”30-year-old Sister Maria Rosaria Rotiroti told the Rome daily La Repubblica.”It is not easy to understand some of the types of music that are the most hard-driving, the most extreme, with messages that are so different from our values,”she said.”But this experience is fundamental in order to stay close to young people.” The seminar, called”Music and Youth,”opened Thursday (Aug. 27).

It included lectures, talks and listening sessions on types of music including rap, trance, techno, and hip hop, and on youth music phenomena such as rave and punk.

There were also sessions describing the evolution of various forms of pop music and the influence of singer-songwriters, music clubs and other aspects of youth culture.

Contemporary musicians in various genres addressed the conference and held question and answer sessions, including La Pina, a local Italian rap singer with dyed red hair and body piercings.”I don’t see anything strange in this seminar,”she told La Repubblica.”The important thing is that they don’t delude themselves. To understand a code (of behavior) can help to bring you closer. But you have to respect that code.” The seminar was not the first time a religious group in Italy has turned to music as a means of approaching contemporary youth. In 1995, local authorities and Jewish leaders released a fast-moving rap-style music video for use in schools to teach highschool students to fight anti-Semitism and racism.

The 20-minute video, called”Vernichtung Baby”(“Extermination Baby”), was produced by the Cultural Office of the Lazio Region, the region where Rome is located, and the Union of Italian Jewish Communities. The video set quick-cut film shots, sophisticated computer graphics, archival film from World War II, clips from well-known movies, and testimony from Holocaust survivors against a dense, fast-moving soundtrack employing rap music, rock, and acid jazz.

In China, Robertson treads softly on religious freedom issue

(RNS) Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson _ who along with other conservative Christians has harshly criticized President Clinton’s non-confrontational approach toward Beijing over religious freedom _ has taken a similar approach during a visit to China.

Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, said he refrained from meeting with underground Chinese church leaders because his government hosts asked him not to.

Robertson _ whose Christian Broadcasting Network has business ties in China _ also did not raise the subject of jailed underground church leaders, the Associated Press reported Friday (Aug. 28).”I think I can do a great deal more subtly and quietly as a friend than I can ever do as a combatant,”Robertson said.

Robertson said he told Premier Zhu Rongji that China has nothing to fear from religion in general and”particularly Christianity.”Robertson said he told Zhu that religion could help”build a strong future China.” For some time, Robertson and other conservative Christians have pressed the Clinton administration to toughen its line toward China, which restricts religious expression to state-sanctioned”official”faith groups. Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, who have been unwilling to abide by Beijing’s rules have formed underground”house churches,”which have been subject to government persecution.

Chinese Muslims and Buddhists in Chinese-occupied Tibet have also been subjected to religious limitations.

Some moderate American church leaders have said the non-confrontational approach Robertson has now embraced will in the long run gain more for religious freedom in China. Confrontation, they have maintained, would only cause a government backlash that would make the situation of religious believers more difficult.

Korean-American minister freed

(RNS) A 73-year-old Korean-American pastor held on on spy charges in North Korea has been released from custody, fined and expelled from North Korea.

Lee Kwang-dok, a Christian minister living in Los Angeles, was freed following a high-level meeting between U.S. and North Korean representatives in New York. He was released Friday (Aug. 28), the Associated Press reported.

Lee was arrested May 27 after entering North Korea to visit relatives. North Korean officials said Lee was spying for South Korea while posing as a businessman.

South Korean news reports, quoting Lee’s family in Los Angeles, said he was fined more than $100,000.

Communist North and capitalist South Korea are technically still at war, despite the peace treaty that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

Update: Utah governor backtracks on polygamy

(RNS) Gov. Mike Leavitt, a Mormon who has come under attack from critics who say he has defended polygamy among Mormons, Thursday (Aug. 27) backtracked and said the practice”is against the law, and it should be.” In July, Leavitt had said cases of human or civil rights violations involving polygamists should be prosecuted but the practice itself may be protected by the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

He also acknowledged he had polygamous ancestors and said polygamists he knew as a child were”decent and hard-working.” His remarks drew fire from by self-described victims of polygamy who urged him to enforce the laws against the practice of multiple marriages.

A debate about polygamy has flared in Utah since reports earlier this summer of incest and child abuse within a polygamist group as well as reports of welfare fraud in another group.

Polygamy, brought to the West some 150 years ago by Mormon pioneers, was abandoned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1890. It is expressly banned in Utah’s Constitution but the practice is considered a low priority law enforcement issue and is rarely prosecuted.”It has been in some ways a painful experience for a lot of people because of having to learn about this in the ways we have,”Leavitt said Thursday of the linking of polygamy to the reports of incest and child abuse.”But if one good thing has come from it, I think it is (that) we are now focused more intensely on the fact that there may be people that are being hurt and abused and to that extent we are committed to helping them,”he said.

Leavitt said the state would take on polygamists”if they’re abusing the system and cheating honest taxpayers.”The point is, we’re not taking anything but a hard line on clear crimes,”he said.

Dissident Catholic bishop says he will ordain nun to priesthood

(RNS) Sister Frances Meigh, a Roman Catholic nun who says she has a vocation to be a priest, is set to be ordained next month by a dissident bishop who has frequently clashed with the church hierarchy.

The controversial ordination is likely to be considered illegal and invalid by the church and Meigh, a 67-year-old anchoress who has been living as a hermit since 1994, could face excommunication if the Sept. 14 rite is held.

Meigh says she is firmly convinced of her own vocation to the priesthood, which she sees in terms of being able to celebrate Mass _”the highest form of intercession for a suffering world.” She also believes the Roman Catholic Church will change its fierce opposition to the ordination of women.”Nothing is going to happen unless someone does something,”she said.”One may have to be illegal for a while.” Bishop Pat Buckley, a controversial priest, was ordained a bishop last May by Bishop Michael Cox, a leader of the Palma de Troya organization that continues to use the old Tridentine (Latin) rite of the Mass in defiance of the Vatican. The group is similar to that of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The relationship of both Cox and Buckley to the Vatican is unclear.

Cox hit the headlines in 1996 when he was offering confession over the telephone on a premium-rate line on which calls cost $1 a minute. He said his aim was to raise money to restore his church premises.

While he was a priest, Buckley took then-Bishop Cahal Daly to court in 1990 in an unsuccessful action for wrongful dismissal after Daly, now a cardinal and head of the Irish Catholic church, dismissed him from his post as a curate.

Since then Buckley has operated as a freelance priest, best known for conducting weddings for divorcees. He claims a congregation of 400 at Larne, Ireland, and conducts 190 weddings a year. He recently acquired a former Anglican church building at Omeath, Ireland, and proposes installing Meigh there as priest.

He said she is the first of 15 applicants for the ministry he is considering ordaining.

In both Britain and Ireland there are a number of Roman Catholic women who,convinced they have a vocation to the priesthood, have taken the step of becoming Anglicans but Meigh is insisting on remaining Catholic.

Quote of the day: A bumper sticker “My Goddess gave birth to your God.” _ A bumper sticker spotted in a health food store in Eugene, Ore.

DEA END RNS