c. 1999 Religion News Service
Baptist Foundation of Arizona fires three officers
(RNS) Three officers of the Baptist Foundation of Arizona, which has been accused of violating state securities law, have been fired.
The foundation, a key fund-raising organization for Southern Baptists in Arizona, informed its clients in a letter that the former officers’ duties have been transferred to a new management committee.
Bill Crotts, president; Tom Grabinski, general counsel; and Don Deardoff, controller, had been on administrative leave after voluntarily removing themselves from their duties. They were terminated Aug. 26.
The announcement of the termination, in a letter dated Aug. 28, was the latest development since the foundation and two related corporations were ordered to stop selling investment products after the Arizona Corporation Commission found they were violating state securities law.
An official of the regulatory commission, which announced the order Aug. 10, has said that the foundation did not disclose its deficit to the public.
The corporations consented to the order without admitting or denying the findings.
In a previous letter, dated Aug. 21, the foundation informed its investors that they might not learn until October about a reorganization plan.
Earlier in the month, the foundation told investors that it would not cash client checks until its board learned more about the probe. It also suspended redemption of all investment products.”We know you’d like us to tell you when you can get some or all of your funds and we’d like to be able to answer that today, but hope you understand that we don’t have quite enough information to be that specific yet,”reads the Aug. 21 letter signed by the new executive oversight committee.”What we can say, however, is that by sometime in October we hope to be in a position to begin communicating a plan to deal fairly with investors.” That letter also advised clients that the executive oversight committee is”working overtime”to review assets, evaluate cash flow and assess business plans.”We are determining how cash flow can be matched with our need and desire to pay investors,”the committee said.
The regulatory commission, whose investigation is continuing, has said that the three corporations have sold more than $483 million in investment products to more than 13,000 investors.
Pope urges Catholic Church to acknowledge mistakes of the past
(RNS) Pope John Paul II called on the Roman Catholic Church Wednesday (Sept. 1) to acknowledge its past mistakes in order to”start a new page of history”in the year 2000.”The church certainly does not fear the truth that emerges from history and is ready to recognize its mistakes wherever they are ascertained, above all when it is a question of respect owed to persons and to communities,”John Paul said.
The pope told pilgrims attending his weekly general audience that the church must seize”the precious occasion of the grand jubilee of the year 2000 (to) begin a new page of history, overcoming the obstacles that still make divisions among human beings and Christians in particular.” Starting with his 1994 apostolic letter on the coming of the third millennium of Christianity,”Tertio Millennio Adveniente,”John Paul has made the acknowledgment of past mistakes a major theme of the holy year 2000. He will pray on Ash Wednesday, March 8, 2000, for the forgiveness of the mistakes”of the children of the church.” The pope placed the schism of 1054 that split the Roman and Orthodox churches and the Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries that divided Protestants from Catholics first among the mistakes of the past.”I think first of all of the sad reality of the divisions between Christians,”the Roman Catholic pontiff told his audience.”The lacerations of the past, certainly not without blame on both sides, remain a scandal before the world.”A second act of penitence regards the acquiescence in methods of intolerance and even of violence in the service of the truth. Even if many performed them in good faith, it certainly is not evangelical to think that the truth must be imposed by force,”he said.”Then there is the lack of discernment of more than a few Christians in respect to situations of the violation of fundamental human rights,”he said.
Although he was not specific, Vatican sources said the pope apparently referred to the Inquisition, the burning of heretics at the stake, the religious wars of the 17th century, excesses of missionaries and the Holocaust of World War II.
The Vatican attempted in a document issued last year to deal with charges the church remained silent while the Nazis massacred 6 million Jews. But some Jewish groups sharply criticized the document,”We Remember: Reflections on the Shoah,”which defended Pius XII, the wartime pope, while expressing repentance for the failure of many Christians to help the Jews.
John Paul called for rigorous research into church actions over the centuries.”The recognition of historic sins supposes taking a stand on events as they really happened, and only calm and complete historical reconstruction can make that emerge,”the pope said. The church, he said,”is inclined to distrust generalized sentences of absolution or condemnation in respect to the various historical epochs.” Warning that”an easy historical relativism would be suspect if not useless,”the pope said the church must examine the past and recognize its mistakes”so that they might be lessons for a future of purer testimony.”
U.S. Catholic delegation concludes visit to Vietnam
(RNS) The chairman of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s international policy committee says although Vietnam has made some progress on religious freedom, more is needed.
Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark, N.J., speaking with Reuters news service Wednesday (Sept. 1) at the end of a historic 10-day visit to the southeast Asian nation, said the Hanoi government has eased some restrictions on Catholic church activities, including the ordination of priests.”There are a lot of good signs,” he said. “However, there are still things that need to be worked on. Even though there have been more priests ordained, there’s still many people not being allowed to go into the seminary system. There are hundreds of people waiting for permission to go into the seminaries.” Vietnam has long been criticized by the United Nations, the U.S. State Department and various religious and human rights groups as having one of the worst records of any nation when it comes to limiting religious freedom.
The visit by McCarrick and three other bishops was the first by a delegation of American Catholic officials since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.
With McCarrick were Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston, president of the USCC and National Conference of Catholic Bishops; Auxiliary Bishop John H. Ricard of Baltimore, chairman of the board of Catholic Relief Services; and Bishop John S. Cummins of San Diego, a member of the USCC’s committee on migration.
The group met with leaders of Vietnam’s 8 million-strong Catholic Church, the second largest in southeast Asia after the Philippines. They also met with some government officials and participated in a Mass in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon.
Israeli official: Thefts of biblical artifacts up as millennium nears
(RNS) The millennium has prompted a sharp increase in the illegal trade of biblical-era artifacts in Israel, according to an official of the Israel Antiquities Authority.”We are now seeing a trend of antiquity dealers wanting to stock up on as many objects as possible because they feel that in the year 2000 there will be a bigger demand by pilgrims for these objects,”said Amir Ganor, who heads the Israeli agency’s theft prevention division.
Ganor told Biblical Archaeology Review magazine that”the hottest items”are oil lamps and coins from the first century A.D. and Byzantine-era bronze crosses.”What more important souvenir can a pilgrim coming here for the year 2000 take back with him than an oil lamp from the time of Jesus? For $15 or $25 he can have a good souvenir,”Ganor said in an interview published in the magazine’s September/October issue.
Arrests in Israel for antiquities theft have more than quadrupled since 1996, when only four such arrests were made. Last year 18 people were arrested for antiquities theft. Four more were arrested during the first half of 1999.
Ganor said his agency has stepped up its surveillance of archaeological sites.
Under Israeli law, 70 licensed antiquities dealers are allowed to buy and sell the artifacts. However, Ganor said about 90 percent of the items the legal dealers handle is stolen merchandise taken from plundered archaeological sites _ although legally proving the items are stolen is often impossible.
Many of the thieves are Israelis working with Palestinians who hide the stolen items in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority before smuggling them back into Israel, Ganor said.
The Palestinian Authority has created a fledgling antiquities agency. However, so far the Israeli and Palestinian counterparts do not cooperate, making it easier for thieves to escape arrest.
Leading Anglican will boycott meeting in `heretical’ Scotland
(RNS) One of the Anglican Communion’s 38 primates, Archbishop Moses Tay of Singapore, says he will not attend the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council being held later this month in Dundee, Scotland.
Tay’s boycott of what he called”heretical”Scotland, appears to be a replay of the strife-riven Lambeth meeting of the world’s Anglican bishops last year in which homosexuality issues sharply divided the prelates.
Although Tay is not actually a member of the ACC, the 100-member body of bishops, clergy and laity that meets every two or three years between the Lambeth Conferences, he would have been present as one of the five members of the standing committee of the Anglican primates and would have a voice but not a vote during ACC deliberations.
Tay’s objection rests on what he and others see as the deliberate flouting of last year’s Lambeth Conference resolutions on biblical authority and morality. In particular, he said the Lambeth resolution that condemned homosexual practice as incompatible with scripture was being ignored in Scotland.
In a letter to Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey and circulated to his fellow primates, Tay cited the”horrendous and heretical statements”by the head of the Scottish Episcopal Church, Bishop Richard Holloway of Edinburgh.”We need to face up to the deep divisions within our communion because of the continuing deviation from the faith once delivered to the saints,”Tay wrote.”We cannot value unity above truth, which is intolerant of error.”Any facade of unity is no more than the proverbial invisible clothes worn by the king.” Tay and Holloway, a vociferous advocate of gay rights, are long-standing opponents. Holloway is also a member of the primates’ standing committee.
Former Southern Baptist seminary president Olin Binkley dies
(RNS) The Rev. Olin T. Binkley, a former Southern Baptist seminary president and early advocate for racial integration during the civil rights era, died Aug. 27. He was 91.
Binkley served as president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., from 1963 to 1974. He also was president of the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada from 1964 to 1966, the Associated Press reported.
Binkley served at Chapel Hill Baptist Church in the 1930s. Members of the North Carolina church were inspired by his civil rights stand and formed a new congregation in 1958 called Olin T. Binkley Baptist Church. That church was expelled in 1992 from the Southern Baptist Convention for giving a preaching license to a gay divinity student.
New executive at center addressing sexual, domestic violence
(RNS) The Rev. Kathryn Johnson has been chosen as the new executive director of the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence in Seattle.
Johnson, an American Baptist minister, has been on the center’s staff for three years and has served in regional and national interreligious, ecumenical and denominational organizations for 27 years.
She replaces the Rev. Marie Fortune, who founded the center and had been its executive director for 22 years. Fortune now will serve as senior analyst of the center, continuing to address religious responses to and prevention of domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse and sexual abuse by clergy.
Quote of the Day: Republican presidential hopeful Alan Keyes
(RNS)”It’s a struggle between the Money-is-God Republicans and the God-is-God Republicans.” _ Alan Keyes, the former Reagan administration official seeking the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, quoted in The New York Times Wednesday (Sept. 1) on the ideological split among those trying to become the GOP’s candidate for president.
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