c. 1999 Religion News Service
Update: Catholic group wants Turner banned from baseball
(RNS) A Catholic organization would like former Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner barred from baseball for a year because it believes recent comments he made amount to religious slurs.
Major League Baseball officials said they are looking into the complaints made Tuesday (March 9) by Thomas Droleskey, head of the 500-member group Christ or Chaos, the Associated Press reported.
Turner has sold his holdings, including the Braves, to Time Warner Inc., but is still associated with the team as Time Warner vice chairman, Droleskey said.
On Feb. 16, Turner was a guest speaker at a dinner of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Association, which supports abortion rights, contraception and other practices condemned by the Catholic church.
When asked what he would say on meeting Pope John II, Turner stretched out an upraised foot toward the audience and said,”Ever seen a Polish mine detector?” He also said the pontiff should”get with it _ welcome to the 20th century”and suggested the Ten Commandments’ ban on adultery should be lifted.
Turner subsequently offered a”heartfelt apology”to William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which was accepted.
But Droleskey believes Turner should be sanctioned just as Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott was when she made remarks baseball officials said were racially offensive.
Droleskey suggested Turner also should take a Catholic religion course. Schott took sensitivity training.
Droleskey said he wrote to baseball Commissioner Bud Selig asking for”immediate action”to suspend Turner from any contact with the Braves and the sport for a year.
Baseball spokesman Richard Levin said the complaint was taken”very seriously.”Turner’s spokesman had no comment.
Christian singer Amy Grant files for divorce
(RNS) Contemporary Christian singer Amy Grant has filed for divorce from her husband Gary Chapman after 16 years of marriage.
Grant, a recording artist with Myrrh Records in Nashville, Tenn., and Chapman, who records with Reunion Records, another contemporary Christian label in Nashville, announced their separation in December.”Myrrh recording artist Amy Grant has regretfully filed for divorce from Gary Chapman, her husband of sixteen years, due to irreconcilable differences,”her record label announced in a statement released Friday (March 5).”Both Grant and Chapman have requested prayers and privacy during this difficult time.” Grant has won five Grammy awards, as well as numerous Dove awards from the Gospel Music Association.”We are saddened by this announcement and continue to pray for Amy, Gary and their children,”said Jim Chaffee, general manager and vice president of Myrrh Records.”Amy’s achievements have raised the level of awareness of Christian music, and, more importantly, the Gospel in the world. Additionally her life and music have encouraged and edified the body of Christ over the span of her career. We will continue to support Amy as a Myrrh artist.” Chapman, who is the host of”Prime Time Country,”a program on The Nashville Network, and Grant have three children.
Tibet Buddhists mark anniversary of uprising against China
(RNS) Tibetan exiles burned 40 Chinese flags and an effigy of China’s president Wednesday (March 10), and thousands of Tibetans took to the streets to protest”illegal occupation”by the Chinese government.
In India, the events took place from New Delhi to the exiled Dalai Lama’s home of Dharamshala. In nearby Nepal, which shares a border with Tibet, an even larger protest took place in Kathmandu, home to some 16,000 Tibetan refugees. The events commemorated a bloody but unsuccessful uprising against China in 1959, during which Tibet’s spiritual and political leader, the Dalai Lama, was forced to flee.
March 10 is known as Tibetan National Day on the Tibetan calendar.
In a speech to some 5,000 people, the Dalai Lama, who has recently been ordered to bed by doctors, said,”A lack of political will and courage on the part of the Chinese leadership has resulted in their failure to reciprocate my numerous overtures over the years,”the Associated Press reported.
Hollywood actors Richard Gere and Goldie Hawn were on hand as the Dalai Lama expounded his middle-ground philosophy which been criticized recently by radical groups wanting total freedom.
In New Delhi, about 5,000 Tibetan protesters marched toward the Indian parliament building and also observed a moment of silence for Tibetans who have been killed under Chinese rule.
Meanwhile, in pre-dawn darkness, a pair of mountaineers scaled Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, one of France’s best-known landmarks, to hang a Tibetan flag and a banner urging United Nations intervention.
Three nuns reported missing in Republic of Congo
(RNS) Three nuns are missing in the Republic of Congo, where vandals have sacked Roman Catholic religious communities, forcing more than half of them to close, the missionary news agency Fides said Wednesday (March 10).
The Rev. Bernardo Cervellera, director of the agency operated by the Vatican Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, said a group of nuns had written to Fides from the Congo to report that violence against church property and staff has reached alarming proportions.
The letter said three nuns have disappeared from the Diocese of Brazzaville, 29 convents have been attacked and sacked and 49 of the 81 religious communities in the country have been forced to close their doors.”In the document, they do not give the names of the nuns or the institutions to which they belong in the hope that they can be found again even through they fear for their lives,”Cervellera said.”The superiors of the religious orders and institutions are appealing to the country’s authorities for dialogue to end the hostilities, guarantee human rights and allow the church to continue to operate in Congo,”he said.
About 40 percent of Congo’s population of 2.4 million is Catholic, according to church figures.
Cree Indians of Quebec ask pope to support their campaign for rights
(RNS) The chief of the Cree Indians of Quebec on Wednesday (March 10) called on Pope John Paul II to support his nation’s campaign to win full human and political rights.
Matthew Coon Come, great chief of the Council of Cree Indians, was among 15,000 pilgrims attending the pope’s outdoor general audience in St. Peter’s Square, but he got a special welcome from John Paul.
Recognizing Come from their meeting during his visit to Canada in 1984, the pope shook the Indian leader’s hand warmly and told him that just as he remembers their meeting in the past, he will remember this meeting in the future.
Come presented to the Roman Catholic pontiff a document saying that the Cree people appreciate his defense of human rights and believe this cancels past errors of the church in its dealings with indigenous peoples, including the description of the Crees in a 16th century papal bull as”savages.” Ted Moses, Cree”ambassador”to the United Nations, said the document asks the pope to support the Crees’ campaign for”equal social and political dignity for indigenous peoples, who do not want to be discriminated against by a society that is not theirs.””This, for us, is only the first step toward an essential dialogue with the Vatican and with the pontiff for the affirmation of the human rights in the world,”Moses said. He noted that 30 percent of the 500,000 Crees are Roman Catholics.”For more than 20 years, the Cree people have been involved in the battle for the recognition of natives’ rights,”he said.”Some objectives have been reached, but we are still far from being able to speak of respect for the rights of man.” In 1973, the Cree became the first Indians of North America to win recognition of the status of a federated nation of Canada and in 1993, the first to set up an autonomous school system.
California Catholic diocesan paper to fold
(RNS) Despite a local Catholic population nearing 800,000, the Diocese of San Bernardino is folding its newspaper,”Inland Catholic.” The June 30th shuttering was announced in the March edition, which blamed the closure on”budgetary stresses and the need to re-prioritize ministry needs.” The 22,500-circulation”Inland Catholic”comes out 10 times a year, after prior cutbacks from weekly to twice-monthly to monthly circulation. It debuted as a weekly in 1982, four years after the San Bernardino diocese was created to serve Southern California’s vast”inland empire,”which now has a local Catholic population of 779,504.”Inland Catholic”won several Catholic Press Association awards, but its annual operating budget of $205,000 includes a $118,000 diocesan subsidiary.”We dodged this bullet every year for the past several years,”wrote editor Steve Barrie.”Every budgeting season, it seems that Inland Catholic’s existence had to be re-justified. I guess that we won’t have to do that this year. I pray that the efforts made by me, my predecessors and my co-workers have contributed not only to the dialogue of faith in this diocese but also to the practice of Catholic journalism.” The paper’s demise makes San Bernardino the only one of California’s 11 Catholic dioceses without a newspaper. In February, the San Francisco archdiocese began publishing its new weekly,”Catholic San Francisco.”
Quote of the day: British animal rights theologian Andrew Linzey
(RNS)”I totally believe in animals in heaven. The question is not will there be animals in heaven, but will humans be there. We are wicked, violent and selfish, although we have the unique capacity to judge the moral significance of our actions.” _ The Rev. Andrew Linzey, a British theologian at Mansfield College, Oxford, and animal rights activist, in a March 8 interview with Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.
DEA END RNS
