c. 2000 Religion News Service
Catholic Bishops Call for Reduction in Defense Spending
(RNS) A group of 34 U.S. Roman Catholic bishops, part of the international Catholic peace movement, is calling for reduced U.S. military spending and a redirection of that money toward health care, education and tax relief.
The group, known as the Pax Christi bishops and headed by Richmond, Va., Bishop Walter F. Sullivan, said there is no reason to spend more money on weapons when children continue to go hungry and millions of Americans do not have access to affordable health care.
The plea to the nation’s 64 million Catholics comes at the same time Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush is promising to increase military spending if elected to the White House. Currently, the United States spends about $276 billion annually on defense, down from $300 billion in 1990.
“Our country continues to have a fascination with weapons as if such instruments of death will bring an abiding and lasting peace,” Sullivan said in a statement. “All our weapons make us no safer because we neglect the least of our brothers and sisters. The ever-increasing defense budget is a scandal in light of pressing needs at home.”
Pax Christi seeks to redirect money spent on the military to benefit the poor instead. Organizers point to Pope John Paul II’s call for a “moral about-face regarding our appetite for weapons of war.”
The campaign says it has received the support of several lay Catholic organizations, including social justice groups and groups of nuns and male religious orders.
Group Asks for Passover Reprieve for Spying Suspects in Iran
(RNS) A leading Iranian Jewish group has asked that the trial of 13 Iranian Jews accused of spying be postponed so the suspects may contact their families and celebrate Passover.
The 13 Jews were arrested last year along with eight Muslims on charges of spying for Israel and the United States. Three of the 13 Jews have been freed on bail. If convicted, the suspects could be executed.
The Tehran Central Jewish Committee has petitioned the Iranian government to let the suspects out on bail so they can celebrate Passover with their families, the Associated Press reported. Passover falls April 20-26, and the trial is scheduled for April 13 in the southern city of Shiraz.
The group also pleaded with authorities to delay the trial “for a few days” to allow the suspects to choose their own lawyers and contact their family members. According to the committee’s letter released Monday (April 3), the judge has refused to meet with Jewish leaders or lawyers hired by the suspects’ families.
A spokesman for Iran’s judiciary system said lawyers have been appointed for the suspects and the trial could be delayed if those lawyers asked for more time to prepare for the case.
The loss of these Jewish leaders will have a “devastating impact on the survival of Iran’s Jewish community,” the letter said. Iran’s Jewish community is already shrinking, down to about 25,000 people from its peak of about 100,000 before the Islamic revolution of 1979.
The case of the accused spies has caught the attention of Western governments and threatened to derail the reformist platforms of President Mohammad Khatami. Iranian officials, however, warned the West not to intervene in an domestic matter.
“The trial of the suspects is an internal matter and any interference and prejudgment is rejected,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi.
Illinois Catholic Bishops Urge Fight Against Racism
(RNS) Urging parishioners to declare “we will not live with the sin of racism any longer,” Roman Catholic leaders in Illinois issued a pastoral letter Monday (April 3) asking parishioners to help stop racism.
Issued a day before the 32nd anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the seven-page letter from 14 Illinois bishops urged parishioners to combat racism by doing such things as getting acquainted with people of other races and refraining from telling racist jokes.
“It would be naive to think that racism will disappear overnight; it is too deeply embedded in the American experience. But change will come if we remain constant and never lose sight of the goal,” instructed the pastoral letter, titled “Moving Beyond Racism: Learning to See With the Eyes of Christ.”
“We commit ourselves to model in our dioceses a future without racism,” the letter continued, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The letter also asked parishioners to withhold support from companies that “practice racist policies,” vote for political candidates who are serious about achieving racial justice, and examine whether racial biases exist in news reports of violent crime.
Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, one of the clergy leaders who signed the letter, said parishioners must move beyond tolerance in order to combat racism.
“Is there a sense of enthusiasm, not just tolerance … to welcome people of different races into our homes, our parishes, our neighborhoods, our institutions?” he asked.
The pastors’ letter drew praise from Monsignor Jack Egan, who marched with King in 1965 in Selma, Ala.
“It is certainly a bold and a faithful statement _ bold in the sense that it is concrete,” Egan said. “I’m very proud of the bishops. … If, in the 1950s, the bishops of Illinois had come out with a statement like this, they would have been stoned to death.”
David Hyde, a member of Presentation Parish on Chicago’s West Side, also said he was pleased.
“Putting pressure on the pastors _ I think that is what this is doing,” said Hyde. “Then the pastors have to pass it on to the parishioners. If the parishioners follow even 50 percent of what’s in that letter, things will change in the next five years.”
Nigerian Leaders Seek Muslim-Christian Dialogue
(RNS) Governors of 19 northern Nigerian states have agreed to establish a joint Muslim-Christian committee in an effort to end the violence sparked by efforts to implement Islamic sharia law in some northern states.
“We have resolved to constitute a committee made up of Muslim and Christian leaders to hold a dialogue on those aspects of sharia not included in the penal code and arrive at a consensus for adoption,” read a letter published Tuesday (April 4) by Nigerian media, Reuters reported.
The predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria practiced sharia for decades under British colonial rule and continued to do so since winning independence in 1960 but it has not formally supplanted the Nigerian penal code.
Christians, who make up about 10 percent of the population in northern Nigeria, fear some aspects of Islamic law are harsher than the Nigerian secular law. Tensions over the matter escalated in January when the primarily Muslim rural state of Zamfara announced it would adopt sharia law.
Fearful the city of Kaduna would follow suit, Christians there held street protests in February and fought with Muslims in a bloody conflict in which hundreds of people died. Reprisal killings in the Ibo heartland, predominantly Christian, claimed the lives of hundreds of northern Muslim immigrants.
In the aftermath of the violence in Kaduna came demands for a “sovereign national conference” to resolve conflicts between Nigeria’s population groups,but the governors’ letter denounced the idea.
“We uphold the federal structure of Nigeria and condemn the call for a sovereign national conference in its entirety,” the letter read. “We reaffirm our total support to the federal government under the leadership of President Olusegun Obsanjo.”
Number of Catholics in World Grows as Number of Priests Falls
(RNS) While the number of Roman Catholics in the world is growing along with the growth in overall population, the number of priests is continuing to drop, according to new Vatican statistics.
The Vatican’s latest Statistical Yearbook, which contains figures for 1998, put the total number of Catholics throughout the world at about 1 billion. It said the Catholic population grew at a rate of 1.29 percent, which is just below the 1998 growth rate of 1.3 percent for total world population.
The number of priests worldwide was 404,626, down from 420,971 a decade earlier, the Vatican said. It said there was significant growth in the number of priests in Africa and some growth in Asia and the Americas but a large drop in Europe.
Looking to the future, the Vatican reported growing numbers of candidates for the priesthood, the monastery and the convent, particularly in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. In 1998, there were 10,992 candidates to become priests or monks, compared to 8,958 in 1982, and 21,303 to become nuns, compared to 17,939 in 1982.
The biggest growth, however, was in the number of permanent deacons, lay members of secular institutes, lay missionaries and catechists, who totaled 3.3 million. About half were in Europe, more than 1 million in the Americas, some 300,000 in Africa, 200,000 in Asia and 14,000 in Oceania.
The number of bishops worldwide increased by about 20 percent between 1978 and 1998, the Vatican said.
Quote of the Day: Brit Smith of Red Oak, Texas
(RNS) “In the Bible it says I’m supposed to. Right now, the hurt is not allowing me to do that.”
Brit Smith, a Red Oak, Texas, man whose ex-wife pleaded guilty March 27 to strangling their two sons after she lost a custody battle when asked if he could forgive her. He was quoted in USA Today.
DEA END RNS
