c. 1999 Religion News Service
Suit filed to block Louisiana school prayer law
(RNS) The American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed suit Friday (Dec. 3) challenging a Louisiana law they said is designed to reintroduce government-sponsored prayer in public schools.
The suit challenges both Louisiana’s new school prayer law and specific practices at West Monroe High School in Ouachita Parish, including prayers broadcast over the school’s intercom.”Public schools are not Sunday schools,”said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United.”Government officials have no business interfering in the private religious lives of individuals.” The law, passed by the state legislature in June and signed by Gov. Mike Foster on July 2, amended existing law permitting”silent prayer or meditation”by striking the word”silent”from the statute.
In addition to challenging the law, the suit contends that two students at West Monroe have refused to participate in prayer activities and one has been harassed and called a Satanist and devil worshipper.”No child should be made to feel like an outsider or a second-class citizen in a public school because of his or her religious or philosophical beliefs,”said Joe Cook, director of the ACLU of Louisiana.”Religious instruction belongs in the homes and churches, not in the classroom where young people of many faiths gather.”
House of Lords keeps Catholic ban on monarchy
(RNS) An attempt to remove the constitutional ban on the British monarch becoming or marrying a Roman Catholic failed in the House of Lords on Thursday (Dec. 2).
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, the former Conservative Secretary of State for Scotland, had presented a motion asking Queen Elizabeth to allow Parliament to debate a bill he was proposing to amend the 1701 Act of Settlement.
The act bars from the throne”all and every person and persons who … is, are or shall be reconciled to or shall hold communion with the see or church of Rome or shall profess the popish religion or shall marry a papist.”It was passed to ensure the Protestant succession and to prevent the last Stuart king, James II, who had become a Roman Catholic, and his heirs from regaining control of Britain and Ireland.
By a 65-14 vote the Lords rejected Forsyth’s motion.
Ironically, opposition was led by a Roman Catholic, Lord St. John of Fawsley, who said Forsyth’s bill was an inappropriate vehicle for raising”a major constitutional issue.”
Churches block Klan cross in Cincinnati
(RNS) Church leaders have booked up all the space in Cincinnati’s Fountain Square for the holiday season in an effort to keep out a Ku Klux Klan cross that has been displayed there during the holiday season for most of the past decade.”We planned it,”the Rev. Thomas Eisentrout of Immanuel United Methodist Church told the Associated Press.”We squeezed the Klan out.” When the Klan called on Monday (Nov. 29) to inquire about getting the display permit, there was was no room available, a public works spokesman said.
The city policy is first-come, first-served.
A Klan group has displayed a cross on the downtown square every year this decade except 1997. Anti-Klan protesters tore down the Klan’s cross twice last year.
Two Filipino churches sign a `covenant for partnership’
(RNS) As church bells rang and sky rockets exploded in the heavens, leaders of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines and the Iglesia Filipina Independiente signed a Covenant of partnership that could lead to full union of the two churches”in God’s own time.” The covenant, signed Nov. 28, is a 400-word statement binding the UCCP, itself a union of churches from the Reformed tradition, and the IFI, a Filipino church that separated from Rome but which has retained Catholic practice and tradition.
In the statement, the two bodies say that despite differences in doctrine, polity, and religious practices, both are”integral parts of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church of Jesus Christ.” The two churches also promise to undertake joint theological and doctrinal studies as well as service projects, Ecumenical News International, the geneva-based religious news agency reported.
Pope braces for a busy Christmas season marking the start of Holy Year
(RNS) Pope John Paul II is bracing for a busy Christmas season, which will mark the start of Holy Year 2000 and the third millennium of Christianity.
The Vatican on Thursday (Dec. 2) issued a schedule showing that the Roman Catholic pontiff, who is 79 years old and suffers from a debilitating neurological disease, will make 13 public appearances between Dec. 12 and Jan. 10.
The official opening of the jubilee year comes not on Jan. 1 but on Christmas Eve when the pope opens the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica.
The door, located to the right of the church’s main entrance, is bricked up between Holy Years, traditionally celebrated only once every 25 years.
This year, John Paul also will open the Holy Doors of Rome’s three other main basilicas _ St. John in Lateran on Christmas Day, St. Mary Major on Jan. 1 and St. Paul’s-Outside-the-Walls on Jan. 18, the start of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
Normally, the pope presides only at the St. Peter’s ceremony, leaving the other Holy Doors to three cardinals, who received the title to each of the other basilicas along with their red hats. But this year, opening a new millennium, is not a normal year.
Another event unique to this year will be an appearance by John Paul at his study window overlooking St. Peter’s Square at midnight on New Year’s Eve to deliver a televised”urbi et orbi”blessing to the city of Rome and the world.
Such blessings usually come only on Christmas Day and Easter Sunday. This year, John Paul will offer two in the span of eight days.
The pope’s first public event of the season comes on Sunday, Dec. 12 when during the Sunday Angelus prayer from his study window he will bless the”bambinelli,”the figures of the Christ child, in all the Christmas creches in Rome’s schools, family homes, parishes and oratories.
Other events on the pope’s Christmas calendar include an audience for the College of Cardinals, members of the papal household and the Roman Curia and Prelature on Dec. 21; a Te Deum mass of thanksgiving in St. Peter’s Basilica in the early evening of New Year’s Eve, and the blessing of children gathered in St. Peter’s Square on Jan. 6, the Feast of the Epiphany when Italians exchange gifts.
On Jan. 9, he will ordain bishops and archbishops; on Jan. 9, he will baptize some two dozen infants, and on Jan. 10 he will deliver a major foreign policy address at an audience for the Vatican diplomatic corps.
Update: Israeli mayor of Jerusalem attacks plan for Nazareth mosque
(RNS) The Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert, called the construction of a mosque in Nazareth a mistake that threatens the fragile tapestry of relations between Israel and the Roman Catholic Church.
Omert, in a Friday (Dec. 3) interview with Fides, the news agency of the Vatican Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, said his government’s approval of the controversial mosque is”a mistaken decision that must be annulled.” Speaking 10 days after the militant Islamic Movement laid the marble cornerstone of the mosque next to the Basilica of the Annunciation (on Nov. 23), Olmert rejected the legality of the Muslims’ ancient claim to the site, which a Nazareth court also has dismissed as groundless.”I suggest that the government take back the title to the land and build a public square for residents and tourists on it,”he said.
Christian leaders in the Holy Land strongly oppose the plan to build the mosque and closed all churches and shrines for two days last week to protest the cornerstone ceremony.
The controversy over the mosque has placed the most severe strain on relations between the Catholic Church and Jewish state since the Vatican recognized Israel in 1993.
But Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state, said Thursday (Dec. 2) that the dispute will not affect plans for Pope John Paul II to visit the Holy Land in late March. He said the trip is”in every way independent.” John Paul was expected to celebrate Mass in the Basilica of the Annunciation on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation when Christians believe the Angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she would give birth to the son of God. The basilica stands on what is thought to be the site of the annunciation.
Sodano noted the Vatican did not interfere with construction of a mosque in Rome,”the center of world Christianity.”But, he said,”at Nazareth it is a problem of time and location.” Olmert said he regretted the impact of the mosque dispute on relations between Israel and the Catholic Church, which he described as”a tapestry of delicate and fragile fibers that cannot bear weights that are too heavy.””It is obvious that the church refutes the (government’s) decision and sees in it a humiliation,”he said.
Pope urges Castro regime to promote”a climate of detente and trust” (RNS) Pope John Paul II has urged the Castro regime to promote”a climate of detente and trust”that guarantees human rights of all Cubans and promised this will boost the state’s credibility on the international scene.
The Roman Catholic pontiff, who made an historic visit to the island last year, spoke at a Vatican ceremony Thursday (Dec. 2) in which Cuba’s new ambassador to the Holy See, Isidro Gomez Santos, 62, a career diplomat, presented his credentials.
John Paul said that by promoting”a climate of detente and faith, which guarantees the fundamental rights of the human person, whether a believer or not,”Cuba will help to end its isolation.
Such a climate, he said,”is fundamental for winning credibility on the international scene”and will lead to”the effective and generous opening of the world to Cuba and of Cuba to the world.”This path will be still easier if Cuba promotes new spaces for liberty and participation for its inhabitants, calling on all of them to collaborate in the construction of their society,”the pope said.
Since the pope’s five-day visit to Cuba Jan. 21-25, 1998, church-state relations have improved markedly, starting with the decision by the Jesuit-educated President Fidel Castro to make Christmas a holiday for the first time since he took power in 1959. Castro also agreed to free a number of political prisoners.
Following the papal visit, the United States has loosened its sanctions against the Castro regime, but the island still suffers from an economic boycott.
Indicating that improved relations would open the way to Vatican assistance, the pope called for a”more constructive and continuous dialogue”between church and state. He said this would make possible”a still more generous opening to the solidarity shown by the universal church through an exchange of persons and means that will enrich both the Catholic community and authorities.”Even if the mission of the church is spiritual and nonpolitical, it favors more fluid relations between church and state, which certainly will contribute to harmony, progress and the good of all without any distinction,”he said.
Later Thursday, in Havana, the Cuban government said it valued”good”relations with the church but avoided responding to John Paul’s call for wider freedoms, Reuters reported.
Quote of the day: Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center
(RNS)”Perhaps the church-mosque dilemma might be resolved by a triangular balance _ placing a synagogue between the two to create a true meeting point of trillennium ecumenism.” _ Shimon Samuels, director for international liaison for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, commenting on the dispute in Nazareth between Christians and Muslims over the construction of a mosque next to the Church of the Annunciation.
DEA END RNS
