c. 1999 Religion News Service
Prominent New York pastor nominated for campus presidency
(RNS) The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, a prominent New York Baptist pastor, has been nominated to serve as president of a campus of the State University of New York.
Butts, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, would become president of the Old Westbury campus of the SUNY system if the system’s board of trustees ratifies the nomination. Butts would retain his role as pastor of the Harlem church if he took the post.”I feel good about assuming the position,”Butts told The New York Times.”I would remain as pastor. It is the soil in which I am rooted.” The 49-year-old minister voiced a strong interest in taking on the challenge of leading the campus of 3,700 students.”I feel very comfortable about this,”he said.”College presidents and ministers have enjoyed unique roles of leadership, and I hope to continue that in some form or fashion.” Some members of the Faculty Senate, an advisory panel that sets some school policies, have charged that the search for the position was rushed and had political overtones. The recommendation of Butts came eight days after the search committee held its first meeting.
But William R. Howell, the chairman of the campus College Council, said any suggestion Butts’ nomination was politically motivated was”absurd on the face of it.” Butts previously has been involved in the politics of the National Baptist Convention, USA, a predominantly black denomination whose leader recently was sent to prison on Florida convictions of grand theft and racketeering. Butts had been outspoken about the need for the Rev. Henry J. Lyons to resign. Lyons resigned in March, shortly before he was sent to prison.
Ala. attorney general issues new guidelines on schools and religion
(RNS) Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor issued a set of guidelines to clarify public school policy on religious activities just weeks after an appeals court overturned a judge’s ruling limiting student prayer.
Pryor said the July 13 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit”confirmed the rights of religious freedom and expression to our public school students. … In DeKalb County and throughout Alabama, it is now clear that students can exercise their free speech rights regarding religion with the same freedom as for any other private speech.” The memorandum, jointly issued in late July by Pryor and Education Department General Counsel Michael R. White, offers guidance to city and county school superintendents. It updates guidelines issued prior to the ruling ordering U.S. District Judge Ira DeMent to rewrite part of his 1997 decision.
The memo reminded superintendents that the appellate court found”genuinely student-initiated religious speech”may not be restricted nor should there be limitations”on the time, place and manner of that speech which exceed those placed on students’ secular speech.” Among permissible activities cited in the guidelines are voluntary participation of students in individual or group prayers during non-structural time and at school-sponsored events, including prayer before or after sports events.
Students also are allowed to participate in religious discussions at school-sponsored events and during non-instructional time, express religious beliefs in homework that”should be judged by ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance,”and discuss religious topics with fellow students in the same way they might discuss political or other topics.
Secondary-school students are permitted to announce religious meetings in the same way announcements are made for non-religious meetings, including via the public address system and school newspaper.
The Atlanta-based appeals court did not throw out DeMent’s restrictions against school officials leading religious activities, including prayers.
The updated guidelines include such restrictions.”School officials (e.g. coaches) should neither encourage nor discourage individual or group prayer,”the guidelines read.”Organization or direction of a prayer by a school official would not be appropriate.” The guidelines also address commencement and baccalaureate ceremonies. They state that school officials should not encourage or discourage students from attending religious baccalaureate services. They also permit student-initiated religious speech at commencement exercises, but forbid school officials from directing, encouraging or organizing such speech.
China’s veto of papal visit to Hong Kong is no surprise to Vatican
(RNS) Reports that China has vetoed a possible visit by Pope John Paul II to Hong Kong came as no surprise to the Vatican, which has seen Beijing rebuff all its recent efforts to improve relations.
The Vatican had no official comment Monday (Aug. 9) on the reports, said to have been confirmed by Bishop Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun of Hong Kong, that the Chinese Foreign Ministry has ruled out a stop in the former British colony when the pope travels to Asia late this year.
Members of the Hong Kong parliament protested the veto, calling it an unwarranted interference in Hong Kong’s affairs.
John Paul would have been the second Roman Catholic pontiff to visit Hong Kong. Pope Paul VI made a three-hour stop there in 1970.
But Vatican sources said Chinese officials already had made clear in informal contacts that John Paul would not be welcome in Hong Kong because the Vatican maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
The situation was further complicated by China’s anger over the recent statement by Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui that Taipei and Beijing should have”state-to-state relations.”China considers Taiwan a breakaway province.
The Vatican suspended formal diplomatic relations with China after the communists took control in 1949. In order to weaken the ties of Chinese Catholics to the Vatican, the government established the Patriotic Association of Chinese Catholics in 1957, forcing Catholics still loyal to the Vatican to practice their faith underground.
In an effort to improve relations, the Vatican indicated earlier this year it might be prepared to jettison its ties with Taiwan.
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state, said in February he was prepared to move the Vatican’s embassy from Taipei to Beijing immediately.”We are aware that in order to normalize our relations with Beijing, we will have to modify relations with Taipei. We are willing to negotiate,”Sodano added in March when Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited Italy.
But the Chinese response was chilly. Jiang did not cross the Tiber River for an audience with the pope, and Zhu Bangzao, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, told a news conference,”Words are not enough. You have to follow through with deeds.” John Paul is scheduled to travel to Asia before the end of the year to address the Roman Catholic bishops who attended a synod at the Vatican in the spring of 1998 to determine the course of the church in the new millennium.
It was at the synod that Asian bishops raised the possibility the pope might visit Hong Kong, which reverted to China in 1998, to celebrate Mass for some 240,000 Chinese Catholics and 120,000 immigrants from the Philippines.
Vatican sources said it is likely the pope will make the trip in November, visiting India with stops in Bombay, Calcutta and New Delhi. It also appeared the Vatican has discarded the idea of a stop in Macao because the Chinese could view a visit by the pope one month before the Portuguese colony returns to Chinese rule as a provocation.
John Paul also is eager to travel to Vietnam, but Vatican sources said a visit would be difficult for logistical reasons. The country lacks facilities for gatherings of hundreds of thousands of people.
Nine senators seek Ten Commandments language in juvenile-justice bill
(RNS) Nine senators have sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch urging language allowing states to post the Ten Commandments in schools be retained in juvenile-justice legislation.
Sen. Michael B. Enzi, R-Wyo., requested in a letter to the Utah Republican that legislative conferees match the Senate version with the House bill giving states the authority to allow placement of the Ten Commandments in public buildings. The Senate bill does not contain that language, The Washington Times reported.”This won’t solve all of our problems. I don’t presume that it will, but reinforcement that it is not OK to kill people or lie or steal is a good thing,”Enzi wrote.”If this is so objectionable, maybe our society is in more trouble than we think.”If a state wants to allow a teacher to display the Ten Commandments on her desk, it should be able to do so.” Eight other senators, including Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., and Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., also signed the letter.
The House version of the bill also forbids awarding attorney’s fees in suits claiming a public school has violated the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause.
Enzi emphasized that the clause in the First Amendment concerning”free exercise”of religion is equal in importance to the clause forbidding establishment of a religion.
British composer blasts alleged Scottish `visceral anti-Catholicism’
(RNS) A blistering attack on the”visceral anti-Catholicism”that he said disfigures much of Scottish society came Monday (Aug. 9) from composer James MacMillan in a lecture at the Edinburgh International Festival.
MacMillan, a Roman Catholic and one of the best-known of the younger generation of British composers, said while it is true religious bigotry did not impinge on the lives of many Scots, Roman Catholics continue to be a source of puzzlement, if not anxiety, for a significant minority.”There is still, even today, a palpable sense of some threat and hostility to all things Catholic in this country,”he said.”Some of these anxieties are a result of a lack of self-confidence among Catholics; some are because of vague and not so vague hints that Catholics are not really full citizens _ possibly because some of them support a (football) team associated with Irish rather than Scottish roots.”But the sense of threat and hostility is there and has huge implications for the so-called `new era’ (marked by the establishment of a separate Scottish parliament) and Scotland’s potential to refresh and renew. If Scotland is ever to establish a genuinely pluralistic democracy where differences are not just recognized and respected but celebrated, nurtured and absorbed for the greater good, we will first have to clear a seemingly insurmountable hurdle,”he said.
MacMillan said that in many walks of life, including the workplace, the professions, academia, the media and politics,”anti-Catholicism, even when it is not particularly malign, is as endemic as it is second nature.” At the heart of the problem, MacMillan said, is a very Scottish trait _ a desire to narrow and restrict the definition of what it means to be Scottish.
Scotland’s people are overwhelmingly Presbyterian, and Scotland is officially secular.”The obsessive attempts, historically and contemporaneously, to peripheralize and trivialize the Catholic experience in Scotland _ and in particular the Irish Catholic experience _ is a self-defeating tendency,”he said.”It represents the very opposite of the enriching multicultural pluralism which I crave for this country.” MacMillan’s speech drew criticism.
Tom Devine, also a Catholic, said the composer had”gone slightly over the top.””What he fails to realize is the enormous change of status in Roman Catholics over the last 20 or 30 years,”said Devine, a professor of history at Aberdeen College.”I have not come across any of this discrimination that he talks about.”
Quote of the day: Roman Catholic Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Camden, N.J.
(RNS)”Why can we not more often summon the strength of will and generosity of spirit that marked our Kosovo refugee effort? Do we respond to a refugee crisis only if we are militarily involved in the conflict that spawns it? Do we respond to a crisis only when it grabs the attention of the media and subsequently the nation?” _ Roman Catholic Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Camden, N.J., chairman of the Bishops’ Migration Committee, in Aug. 4 testimony to Congress on what he said was the U.S. abdication of its role in refugee protection.
DEA END RNS
