c. 1999 Religion News Service
Greek Orthodox leaders demand penance from the pope
(RNS) Leaders of the Greek Orthodox Church have ruled out a spiritual pilgrimage by Pope John Paul II to Athens until the Roman Catholic pontiff apologizes and does penance for centuries of enmity between Orthodox and Catholics.”The pope can come to Greece as a head of state but not as a religious leader,”Metropolitan Kallinikos, spokesman for the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church, said Monday (Sept. 6), following a meeting of a council of church leaders.”The pope cannot visit Greece as the head of the Catholic Church before asking forgiveness and doing penance for the interventions by the church in the Orthodox world from the epoch of the Crusades until today,”the Italian news agency ANSA quoted Kallinikos as saying.
In a letter published in June, John Paul said he hoped to make a spiritual pilgrimage to biblical sites in Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, the Palestine Authority territory, Syria and Greece to mark the start of the third millennium of Christianity.
Greek Orthodox leaders immediately expressed opposition to a papal visit to Athens to recall the New Testament account of St. Paul’s sermon on the Areopagus, symbolizing the whole of humanity’s encounter with the gospel.
The synod, headed by Christodoulos, the Orthodox archbishop of Athens and all Greece, formalized that opposition in its meeting Monday.
Both the Vatican and the Greek government sought to avoid a clash.
Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, in Greece to attend a religious symposium, said in an interview with the Greek newspaper To Vima that the pope has not yet asked to visit Greece.”The pope does not desire to come to Greece soon. It is a desire for the near future,”Cassidy said.
Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis said John Paul”will be welcome in Greece like every head of state,”adding he did not want to interfere in ecclesiastical questions.
But Catholic Archbishop Nikos Foscolo of Athens warned the controversy has harmed ecumenical efforts.”The criticisms of a visit by the pope have set back dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox by 10 years,”he said.
Greek Orthodox sources said they want the pope to apologize for the schism of 1054 that divided the Greek and Roman churches; the Crusades, which saw the conquest and sacking of Constantinople in 1204; and the Council of Lyons II in 1274, which attempted unsuccessfully to unite the Greek and Roman churches.
Kallinikos also attacked the Eastern churches that follow Orthodox rites but are united with Rome. He called them”Trojan horses of the Catholic Church.” Vatican sources said last week the pope may break his pilgrimage into two or more separate segments, starting before the opening of Holy Year 2000 on Christmas Eve and continuing during the millennium celebrations.
John Paul is expected to travel in early December to the Patriarch Abraham’s birthplace at Ur of the Chaldees in southern Iraq, Mount Sinai in Egypt and possibly Damascus. Israeli officials have said he will tour the Holy Land in March.
`See You at the Pole’ to have auxiliary adult events
(RNS)”See You at the Pole,”the event where young people have gathered to pray for their schools each fall, has expanded to include auxiliary activities involving adults.”See You at the Pole”will be held Sept. 15, with millions of youth expected to pray on their campuses at 7 a.m. local time. The event is intended for public school students, but others can also participate.
Doug Clark, director of field ministries for the National Network of Youth Ministries, said the reports of school violence, especially the April 20 shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., have fueled greater interest on the parts of adults.”There has been an awful lot of attention directed to the events in Columbine and school violence in general, and I think that there’s more of a felt need by people in the church than in the past to pray for our schools, to pray for our children,”he said.”As a result of that, I believe that more adults will be involved in praying for schools this year.” Clark’s San Diego-based organization, which has helped coordinate”See You at the Pole”activities, also is promoting”Challenge 2000 Sunday.””It’s setting aside services on the weekend before `See You At the Pole’ to pray for students and teachers to represent God faithfully on the campus throughout the year,”said Clark.
He said Southern Baptists are coordinating an activity called”Campus Prayer Journeys,”in which adults are being asked to gather on public school grounds to pray for students and school staffers at 7 p.m. on the evening before the Sept. 15 observance of”See You at the Pole.””They have adults walk around or walk to … the school and to pray for the kids and pray for the school,”said Clark.
Other auxiliary events are being planned in local communities, he added.”The momentum for `See You at the Pole’ doesn’t appear to have diminished,”said Clark.
About 3 million young people participated last year _ the majority of them in the United States _ and he expects at least that number to take part this year.”See You at the Pole”began in 1990 with the prayer activities of a Southern Baptist church youth group in the Fort Worth suburb of Burleson, Texas.
The event has drawn criticism from American Atheists Inc.
Ron Barrier, a spokesman for the group, based in Parsippany, N.J., dismissed claims that”See You at the Pole”is a student-led and student-initiated event.
He called it”a premeditated attempt at child recruitment in the public schools spearheaded and instigated by adults, pastors, churches and other outside evangelical organizations. Evangelical groups are attempting to control the public school forum by attempting to coerce students to publicly identify their religious inclinations.”
Vatican theologians brand book on Pius XII”shameful libel” (RNS) Striking back at a new book attacking Pope Pius XII as an anti-Semite who supported Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, Vatican theologians Tuesday (Sept. 7) branded the charges”unjust”and a”shameful libel.” The target of the Vatican ire is”Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII,”by British journalist John Cornwell, scheduled to be published in the United States in October. The forthcoming issue of the magazine Vanity Fair is to carry an excerpt from the book.
Despite decades of controversy about Pius XII’s wartime role, the Vatican is proceeding to examine his eligibility for sainthood in a cause begun by Pope Paul VI in 1965. Vatican officials have said he may be beatified, the step below sainthood, along with Paul VI and Pope John Paul XXIII during next year’s holy year celebrations.
Cornwell contends that previously secret documents in the Vatican archives and elsewhere show that as papal nuncio to Germany before World War II, Eugenio Pacelli, who became Pius XII, supported Hitler’s rise to power to counter the spread of communism and he failed to help the Jews once elected pope in 1939 because of his own deep-seated anti-Semitism.”Libel, shameful libel,”said the Rev. Georges Cottier, a theologian attached to the papal household and vice president of the Historical Commission for the Jubilee Holy Year 2000.”It is now almost 40 years that accusations of this kind have been poured against the memory of the pontiff, who died in 1958, but every time I cannot find an explanation for this perseverance,”Cottier said.”We see a continued, dishonest scandal-mongering against Pope Pius XII,”he said.
The Rev. Peter Gumpel, who is the official in charge of presenting the cause for beatification of Pius XII to the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, has consistently rejected attacks on his wartime conduct.”All the records conserved in the Vatican Archives demonstrate that the pontiff worked to save the largest possible number of Jews from Nazi extermination, urging priests and members of religious orders to lend every kind of aid and assistance,”Gumpel said.”For his actions, through which at least 800,000 Jews were saved, Pius XII gained recognition in the immediate postwar period from the international Jewish community and the highest leaders of the state of Israel,”the priest said.”The post-mortem accusations against Pius XII are in entire bad faith and constitute an unjustified moral aggression.” Cornwell, a former seminarian, is the author of”A Thief in the Night,”a best seller contending Pope John Paul I died because the Vatican neglected signs of his ill health.
Southern Baptists and Jews in new spat over prayer guide
(RNS) Southern Baptists have been asked to pray that Jews accept Jesus as the Messiah during Judaism’s High Holy Days, a move denounced by Jewish leaders as arrogant and offensive.
With the High Holy Days set to begin Friday (Sept. 10) at sundown, the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board has published a new prayer booklet intended to guide church members”as they intercede with God on behalf of his chosen people,”according to Baptist Press, the denomination’s official news service.
The High Holy Days, a 10-day period during which traditional Jews believe God seals their fate for the coming year, is Judaism’s holiest period. Randy Sprinkle, who directs the International Mission Board’s prayer strategy office, said the period is an appropriate time for Christians to pray for Jews to accept Jesus as an act of love.”Intercessory prayer is an act of love. Christian intercessors are people of love. They love the Jewish people, even scattered across the Earth as they are, because God first loved the Jewish people,”said Sprinkle.
Don Kammerdiener, International Mission Board executive vice president, said Southern Baptists are obligated to pray for Jews.”Jesus stated clearly that his followers were to begin their witness to him in Jerusalem, the heartland of the Jews. … Obedient Christians have no choice except to invite Jews and all other peoples to come to faith in Christ.” But what Southern Baptists view as love and obligation, Jews regard as disrespect and inciteful.”We are shocked and deeply offended by the call … to pray that Jews will convert to Christianity during the High Holy Days,”said Abraham H. Foxman, Anti-Defamation League national director.”It is pure arrogance for any one religion to assume that they hold `the truth,’ especially on the eve of the holiest days for the Jewish faith.” In a letter to Paige Patterson, Southern Baptist Convention president, Foxman said the prayer call”projects a message of spiritual narrowness that invites theological hatred.” Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of Reform Judaism’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations, said that while”we respect the right of Southern Baptists to hold beliefs that are different from our own … we do not welcome a campaign that singles out the Jewish people for conversionary activities.” Yoffie also said,”We are particularly saddened that this campaign comes during the holiest time of the Jewish year, shortly after a number of violent, anti-Semitic acts have been committed in cities throughout America.” Yoffie’s reference was to the recent shooting at a Los Angeles Jewish community center, the burning of three synagogues in Sacramento, Calif., and other incidents.
The current Jewish-Southern Baptist spat is by no means their first. In 1996, the Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution calling for a special effort to proselytize Jews, prompting massive Jewish anger.
The International Mission Board earlier published a prayer guide for Southern Baptists to pray for Muslims to accept Jesus as the Messiah. Such prayers for Muslims were recommended for Ramadan, the start of Islam’s holiest period.
Shanghai synagogue will host first Rosh Hashana service in 47 years
(RNS) For the first time in 47 years, a Shanghai synagogue visited in 1998 by first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will host Rosh Hashana services.
Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year and the start of the 10-day High Holy Days period, begins at sundown Friday (Sept. 10).
The Ohel Rachel Synagogue, built in the 1920s, served as a warehouse for many years until it was restored by the Shanghai municipal government in 1998. That same year, Clinton and Albright were on hand when the synagogue received a new Torah scroll, a donation from the New York-based Appeal of Conscience Foundation headed by Rabbi Arthur Schneier.
Jews first settled in Shanghai in the 19th century, coming from Baghdad, Bombay and Cairo for business reasons. During World War II, European Jews fleeing the Nazis swelled the city’s Jewish population to 25,000.
Virtually the entire community left at war’s end, and today only about 200 Jews _ international businessmen, diplomats and journalists _ remain in Shanghai.
British government appoints first Muslim prison adviser
(RNS) The British government, citing a doubling over the past five years of the number of Muslim prison inmates, has appointed its first Muslim adviser to the prison service.
Muslim inmates in England and Wales now number 4,355.
The adviser, Maqsood Ahmed, will work with the Home Office’s existing full-time senior chaplains from the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.
Ahmed, named Tuesday (Sept. 7), has worked with multiracial communities in Britain for the past 20 years. Among other things his job will be to ensure Muslim prisoners have adequate opportunities to practice their religion, particularly during Ramadan when Muslims are obliged to fast during daylight hours, and are supplied with appropriately prepared food.
Quote of the day: The Fellowship of Reconciliation
(RNS)”The world community must not stand by as the Indonesian military supports savage militias who are intent upon terrorizing a people and overturning the overwhelming vote for independence.” _ The Fellowship of Reconciliation, an interfaith organization supporting nonviolent alternatives to conflict, calling Sept. 8 on the United Nations to send a peacekeeping force to Indonesian-controlled East Timor.
DEA END RNS