c. 2000 Religion News Service
Appeals Court Upholds Student-Initiated School Prayer
(RNS) A federal appellate court says a recent Supreme Court ruling on school prayer does not prevent Alabama students from praying in school in student-initiated settings.
“So long as the prayer is genuinely student-initiated, and not the product of any school policy which actively or surreptitiously encourages it, the speech is private and it is protected,” the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday (Oct. 19).
The appellate court had been asked by the U.S. Supreme Court justices to reconsider its ruling in a DeKalb County, Ala., case after the high court ruled that a Santa Fe, Texas, school policy allowing student prayers before football games was unconstitutional.
The appellate court ruled that permitting student prayers in the Alabama case does not conflict with the Santa Fe decision, upholding its previous ruling.
“The Establishment Clause does not require the elimination of private speech endorsing religion in public places,” the 11th Circuit ruled. “The Free Exercise Clause does not permit the state to confine religious speech to whispers or banish it to broom closets. If it did, the exercise of one’s religion would not be free at all.”
Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, challenged a federal court order by an Alabama federal judge, saying it unconstitutionally restricted students’ religious expression.
“This decision by the 11th Circuit puts to rest this issue and safeguards the First Amendment rights of students,” Sekulow said in a statement. “`The decision also sends a strong signal that student-led, student-initiated prayer is still constitutionally protected in this country.”
The ACLU of Alabama sued on behalf of a DeKalb County educator and his son, a student in the county system.
“We’re extremely disappointed with the 11th Circuit’s decision,” said Jeanne Locicero, a law fellow with the ACLU of Alabama. “We don’t believe that they applied the principles or the spirit of the Supreme Court’s decision in Santa Fe.
“They’ve created a false distinction by limiting Santa Fe to a particular student policy instead of taking into account the social context in which prayer happens at the schools, like at school-sponsored assemblies, with speakers over the public address system.”
Vatican Rejects Papal Retirement Rumor
(RNS) The Vatican moved quickly Thursday (Oct. 19) to discourage new speculation Pope John Paul II will retire from his lifetime office next year, a move that would be next to unprecedented in Roman Catholic Church history.
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said claims by Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels that the pontiff may ask to retire for health reasons were no more than the cardinal’s personal opinion.
“It is a personal opinion of Cardinal Danneels and finds no confirmation whatsoever,” Navarro-Valls said in response to reporters’ questions.
News reports connected to the publication of Danneel’s new book, “Frankly Speaking: Six Conversations With the Cardinal,” quoted him as predicting changes in church rules.
Danneels said new rules might well require popes to resign at the age of 75 as most diocesan bishops do today and John Paul might lead the way by asking to retire in 2001. John Paul turned 80 in May.
“The question will inevitably be posed in the same form to popes” as it is to bishops today, the cardinal said. “And it would not surprise me if the pope were to retire after 2000. He wanted at all costs to reach the jubilee year 2000, but I consider him capable of retiring afterwards.”
Danneel’s comments marked the third time this year a prominent Catholic prelate has attracted attention by commenting publicly about the pope’s health.
In April, French Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger caused a stir by saying Roman Catholics must be prepared to see the pope’s health decline to the point where he may be totally paralyzed by the progressive neurological disorder that plagues him.
In January, Archbishop Karl Lehman of Mainz, president of Germany’s Catholic bishops conference, said he thought “the pope would be capable of it (retirement) if he judged that he was no longer able to guide the church with authority.”
Article 332 of the church’s Code of Canon Law states that a pope may resign from office as long as he does so of his own free will. So far the only pope to resign willingly was Celestine V in 1294.
But the pontiff’s assistants are busy putting together his papal schedule for next year. “I’m not old,” John Paul told some visitors last spring.
The pope’s tentative plans for 2001 include trips to Syria, Malta, Poland and the Ukraine.
Rights Monitor: China Continues Religious Persecution
(RNS) Two members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement who filed suit against the Chinese government for its treatment of adherents have disappeared, group members in Beijing have reported.
Chu O-ming, a Hong Kong resident working in Beijing, and Wang Jie, who also worked in Beijing, were taken into custody by police in Beijing on Sept. 7 during a raid on the home in which they lived. The raid followed a lawsuit the two filed in late August against Chinese President Jiang Zemin and two of his aides in protest of the government’s ban against Falun Gong.
Chu’s relatives living in Beijing were told on Saturday (Oct. 14) that Chu had been released from a detention center in Beijing the previous night and they could retrieve his personal belongings, a Falun Gong spokeswoman in Hong Kong, where Falun Gong remains legal, told Reuters.
Chu’s family never heard from him, said Sharon Xu, and when they arrived at the detention center to learn more about his fate, they were simply told Chu was no longer being held at the center.
Wang also is not at the detention center, said Falun Gong followers in Beijing. They said they had no knowledge of any communication between Wang’s relatives and Chinese officials.
“It is not very favorable for Mr. Chu or Mr. Wang,” Xu said. “We’re very concerned.”
Falun Gong _ a combination of traditional Chinese exercises and Buddhist and Taoist principles _ was banned in July of last year after Chinese leaders decided the group was a threat to the Communist Party.
Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested since then, and movement leaders have been sentenced to prison terms as long as 18 years.
Meanwhile, a 19-year-old Chinese Protestant died Monday (Oct. 16) at a county jail in central China after officials beat him and then refused to provide medical care, according to human rights monitors.
Police arrested Liu Haitong on Sept. 4 during an illegal church service at a private home in Henan province, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy told the Associated Press.
Protestant Christians in the province have demanded authorities end their crackdown on religious groups not sanctioned by the state.
Vatican Sends Greetings to Hindus on Diwali
(RNS) The Roman Catholic Church sent greetings to the world’s Hindus as they prepared for Diwali new year celebrations. It expressed the hope that improving interfaith relations will benefit world harmony and peace.
“May the world around us, particularly the world of the oppressed, the marginalized, the forgotten ones and the innocent victims of injustice, feel the warmth of our growing relationship,” said a letter written by Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.
“May both Christians and Hindus continue to grow in mutual respect and understanding and be enriched together in order that they may contribute to building peace and harmony in our world,” Arinze said.
“A spirit of openness and dialogue has been characteristic of both our respective traditions. While acknowledging the fundamental differences in our two religions, if nevertheless we show each other respect this will help not only our own mutual enrichment but will serve as an example and an encouragement to the religious world at large,” the cardinal said.
The Vatican press office released the text of Arinze’s letter Friday (Oct. 20) along with a brief explanation about Hindu new year.
“Known also as Deepavali or `the string of oil lamps,’ the feast of Diwali is celebrated by all Hindus,” the Vatican said. “Based on ancient mythology, it symbolizes the victory of truth over falsehood, light over darkness, life over death, good over evil. The actual celebration lasts three days, marking the start of the new year, reconciliation among family members, especially brothers and sisters, and the adoration of God.”
Diwali celebrations culminate Oct. 27 for the world’s estimated 750 million Hindus.
Update: Ebola Death Toll Rises in Uganda
(RNS) The number of people in Uganda killed by a new outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus has risen to 47 out of 122 reported cases of infection, the World Health Organization announced Friday (Oct. 20).
Six people in northern Uganda’s Gulu district, home to the majority of the cases of infection, died Thursday (Oct. 19), said the agency, noting that it expects the number of deaths to continue to climb.
Dozens of health officials from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have traveled to Gulu to help locate the origins of the virus, which is spread through contact with bodily fluids.
The disease causes flulike symptoms as well as internal and external bleeding, and cannot be detected by blood tests. Some 90 percent of confirmed infections lead to death, sometimes in as little as two weeks.
Frightened by the prospect of infection themselves, members of a Sudan-based rebel group in Uganda have freed 40 people recently taken hostage, a local official announced Friday (Oct. 20).
Operating from bases in southern Sudan, the Lord’s Liberation Army has routinely kidnapped civilians to help fight its 13-year-old war against the administration of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
“The (rebel group) said they should go home because they didn’t want to catch Ebola,” Lt. Col. Walter Ochora, chairman of the Gulu district, told Reuters.
Catholic Nun Murdered in Zambia
(RNS) A Roman Catholic nun known for three decades of charity work among the poor in Zambia has been killed during a robbery.
Authorities believe Sister Florianna Trelli, 50, was murdered Oct. 7 by five robbers who wanted the van she was driving, Ecumenical News International reported.
Trelli had worked with the poor in Zambia since 1972, spending the past four years in northern Zambia at St. Francis Mission Hospital in Solwezi, near the country’s border with the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. Trelli was headed to St. Francis Mission at the time of the attack, a mission worker traveling with the nun said.
Police have arrested two people suspected of being connected to the crime, but authorities do not have concrete proof of any direct link, a police spokesman said. The two suspects are believed to have come from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Archbishop John Mambo, regional superintendent of the Church of God in Central Africa, called for the Zambian government to bring Trelli’s attackers to justice.
“This is a blow to all the Christian churches,” he said. “We can’t allow this to discourage us. We must soldier on. But the perpetrators of this act must be brought to book.”
Thomas Lumba, executive director of the Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia, urged the church not to withdraw from the area.
“Inasmuch as we understand their anger, sorrow and pain, they should not withdraw because it is not the robbers who are going to be affected by their move, but the poor villagers of Solwezi,” he said.
Quote of the day: French Communist Party leader Robert Hue
(RNS) “Those who think that communism rhymes with archaism are wrong. Communism is about modernity and there’s nothing decadent about creation.”
_ French Communist Party leader Robert Hue explaining why the party is sponsoring an art exhibit on Jesus and hosting parties with France’s elite supermodels in an effort to raise cash. He was quoted by Reuters.
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