c. 1998 Religion News Service

Religious leaders urge debt relief for Mitch-ravaged Central America

(RNS) Central American church leaders, joining national secular officials and international luminaries such as former presidents George Bush and Jimmy Carter, are calling on international lenders to forgive the foreign debt of Honduras and Nicaragua _ two poor nations devastated by Hurricane Mitch.”It makes no sense to receive massive amounts of international aid and then turn around and send money out of the country to pay interest on the debt,”said Noemi Espinoza, executive president of the Christian Commission for Development in Honduras.”We want to keep our resources at home to rebuild our country,”Espinoza told Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.”We still need help from our friends around the world, but we can make our own contribution. Cancelling the debt will make that possible. Otherwise, we’ll never recover from the hurricane.

Honduras’s foreign debt stood at about $4.5 billion in 1996, according to Jubilee 2000/USA, the group organizing support among American religious and other communities for reducing or cancelling the debt of some 40 poor nations. Last year it paid $539 million in debt payments, more than $1 million a day. Nicaragua has a foreign debt of $5.9 billion, much of which was incurred during the U.S.-sponsored Contra war in the 1980s. Last year it made interest payments of $349 million.

Last week, the Ecumenical Committee of International Church Personnel in Nicaragua noted that in 1997 the Nicaraguan government spent two-and-a-half times as much on debt service as on health and education combined.

Former presidents George Bush and Jimmy Carter, both of whom toured Mitch-devastated regions, have called for cancellation of the two countries’ debts.”The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund should forgive Nicaragua’s and Honduras’s outstanding debts because it will probably take them 10 to 15 years to recover,”Carter said.

Nicaraguan Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo also called for the cancellation of the debt as”a gesture of solidarity and compassion.” Archbishop Oscar Andres Rodriguez of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, also issued a plea for debt forgiveness as a necessary part of the reconstruction effort the two nations will have to undergo.”It may not be economically possible, nor politically possible, but it has to be humanly possible,”he said.

Theologians warned Internet may cause social divisions

(RNS) One of France’s leading journalists has warned an international gathering of Lutheran theologians that new technologies such as the Internet, often touted for their ability to bring people together, are instead creating new social divisions.

Ignacio Ramonet, editorial director of Le Monde Diplomatique, said the Internet is creating a new inequality between what he termed the”info-rich”and the”info-poor.” Ramonet said this is happening”not only in the Northern hemisphere, within developed countries, where only a minority possess a personal computer, but above all in the Southern hemisphere, where the lack of even the most basic equipment marginalizes millions of people.” The journalist made his comments at a meeting of theologians in Wittenberg, Germany, sponsored by the Lutheran World Federation to look at the meaning of Martin Luther’s concept of justification _ how a person is justified before God _ in today’s world.

In a background paper produced for the conference, the LWF noted that the 16th century Reformation sparked by Luther was made possible in part by new technology _ the invention of the printing press, Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news service reported.”Luther recognized the power of the mass media to influence the public awareness process,”the paper said.

Ramonet noted both the technological poverty of poor nations and the globalization of the world economy as separate but linked elements in the development of”info-rich”and”info-poor”social sectors.”We’re told that there are few telephone lines in the poor countries, and we know that it is impossible to access the Internet without a telephone connected to a computer, not to mention the absence of electrical supplies _ more than 2 billion people have no electricity _ or the disastrous problem of illiteracy,”he said.

In terms of globalization, Ramonet invoked the dystopias of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell.”Some people are dreaming of a perfect market of information and communication, completely integrated thanks to electronic networks and satellites, without borders and functioning permanently in real time,”he said.

But, he said, such visions could easily become the”false progress of a world administered by the thought police.”

Birmingham, England: Where Winterval is replacing Christmas

(RNS) Anglican Bishop Mark Santer of Birmingham, England, says he’s a little perplexed, even miffed at the city council of Birmingham, one of the nation’s largest cities.

Members of the council have voted to call the city’s festivities between Christmas and New Year’s”Winterval”_ a combination of winter and festival _ rather than Christmas, the more traditional name for the holidays.

The council members said Christmas remains”at the heart”of the festival _ which lasts 42 days _ but that Winterval was more appropriate, Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency reported.

Santer said he first laughed at the change, but in a letter to clergy in his diocese, added:”I wonder what madness is in store for us this Christmas?”No doubt it was a well-meaning attempt not to offend, not to exclude; not really, to say anything at all …. Now, it seems, the secular world, which professes respect for all, is actually deeply embarrassed by faith.” In response, the city council adopted a new statement, retaining the name but stressing the council”wants people to celebrate Christmas and enjoy Christmas.

The Times newspaper, meanwhile, predicted that”people will ignore the new name anyway.”

Dissident theologians urge religious orders to resist Vatican pressures

(RNS) Two Roman Catholic theologians who have fallen afoul of the Vatican’s watchdog Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and who are both members of religious congregations have written to the heads of religious orders in Rome asking them to resist pressure from the doctrine agency to discipline members of their congregations.

One of the two, Father Paul Collins, an Australian church historian and broadcaster whose book”Papal Power,”published 18-months ago, was condemned in Rome, made the letter public. The other theologian is Father Tissa Balasuriya, who was excommunicated because of the views expressed in his book”Mary and Human Liberation”but whose excommunication was lifted following worldwide protests over his treatment.

Speaking in London Wednesday (Nov. 11), Collins said that he followed Father Hans Kung’s advice and went public at once with the story of being investigated by Rome. Such publicity can help insulate the dissident by generating positive public responses.

His book was a critical examination of the doctrine of papal primacy in which he argued that a one-sided and unbalanced emphasis on the power of the papacy from the Middle Ages onwards has helped distort the church’s understanding of itself and had contributed to the papacy becoming an obstacle not just to ecumenical advance but to the development of Catholicism itself.

Describing the pressure put on religious orders by the authorities at the Doctrinal Congregation, Collins said:”They try to get major superiors to do their dirty work for them.” Quote of the day: Orthodox leader Mathews Mar Barnabas

(RNS)”Somebody who is poorer than myself _ I must respect him as if he is richer than myself.” Mathews Mar Barnabas, metropolitan of the American Diocese of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, explaining his faith when introduced as the leader of the newest member of the National Council of Churches at the NCC General Assembly Wednesday (Nov. 11).

DEA END RNS