c. 2000 Religion News Service

Clinton Postpones First Federal Execution in 37 Years

WASHINGTON (RNS) Religious opponents of the death penalty won a partial victory Thursday (Dec. 7) when President Clinton postponed the first execution of a federal inmate in 37 years so officials can study alleged disparities in the system.

Saying there is “no room for error,” Clinton postponed the execution of convicted drug smuggler and murderer Juan Raul Garza until next June when the new president will be asked to decide the case. Garza was scheduled to die in an Indiana federal prison Tuesday (Dec. 12).

A broad spectrum of religious leaders had asked Clinton to stop Garza’s execution, and several called for an across-the-board moratorium on all federal executions. Clinton said he had done neither, but wanted to be sure the system is free of racial and ethnic prejudice.

“After a close review of this issue … I am not satisfied that, given the uncertainty that exists, it is appropriate to go forward with an execution in a case that may implicate the very issues at the center of that uncertainty,” Clinton said in a statement.

On the same day Clinton made his decision, Attorney General Janet Reno said she does not support a federal moratorium. Her department is conducting a review of the federal system to “make sure, as we look at it, that race and ethnicity have not been an inappropriate factor.”

On Nov. 6, an array of religious leaders, including the head of the Presbyterian Church (USA), asked Clinton to impose a moratorium. Two weeks later, on Nov. 20, an coalition of religious and civic leaders including the NAACP’s Julian Bond and three Catholic bishops, again asked for a moratorium.

On Monday (Dec. 4), the head of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops went one step further, asking Clinton to overturn the death sentences of all federal inmates as a final act of grace for the Jubilee Year. “The Jubilee Year is not the time to begin again the execution of those who commit federal crimes,” wrote Galveston-Houston Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Report: U.S. Policy Should Do More to Address Religious Freedom Issues

(RNS) Though the U.S. State Department has taken some steps to address the issue of religious freedom worldwide, the government has apparently done little to integrate concern for religious freedom into U.S. foreign policy, a federal commission on religious freedom worldwide has concluded in a new report.

“The State Department’s report describes a number of countries where the conditions of religious freedom have deteriorated yet U.S. policy toward those countries has not been adjusted as a result,” concluded the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in its report released Friday (Dec. 8).

The report was an assessment of the State Department’s second annual report on religious freedom and its implementation of the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act. That act created the commission to monitor religious freedom abroad.

The commission praised the State Department for designating _ for the second consecutive year _ Burma, China, Iran, Iraq and Sudan as nations whose records of religious violations make them “countries of particular concern,” but expressed disappointment that Laos, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan were omitted from the list.

Noting that the 1998 Religious Freedom Act requires some policy response from the government toward countries given such designation, the commission faulted the State Department’s report for failing to mention whether sanctions were imposed on any of those countries.

The report also faulted the State Department’s report for failing to expound upon religious freedom violations resulting from state control of religious institutions, and criticized the document for obscuring “the main thrust of what is happening” through “omissions of important context.”

Such is the case in the department’s review of religious freedom of Sudan, the commission said, which fails to address the connection between oil extraction and government persecution of minority religions.

The commission cautioned the State Department against misrepresenting the conditions of religious freedom in its review of improvements in religious freedom worldwide.

“The mention of such positive steps in the executive summary can overshadow an overall negative situation,” said the commission’s report, adding that “Severe persecutors can make a positive gesture without improving the overall conditions of religious freedom. On occasion they do it to deflect criticism and mislead foreign observers.”

_ Shelvia Dancy

Jesus Video Delivered in Largest Single-City Distribution

(RNS) Postal workers will have an extra set of packages to deliver this holiday season in Central Florida: nearly a half-million copies of a video about Jesus produced by Campus Crusade for Christ.

In the largest single-city distribution thus far, Christian leaders are supporting the delivery of some 545,000 copies of the “Jesus” video, an 83-minute condensed version of the 1979 “Jesus” film produced by the Orlando, Fla.-based evangelical ministry. The videos are scheduled to be delivered from Dec. 11 to 16.

The Rev. Paul Scroggins, executive director of Vision Orlando, a coalition of pastors and other ministry leaders, said the project will cost $1.3 million. The money was raised through donations by individuals and churches in the Orlando area.

Initially, the video distribution _ which has occurred in cities across the country for seven years _ was done through door-to-door campaigns. But more recent distributions have been done by mail.

“It’s just easier and more efficient,” said Scroggins, who also is the director of the Great Commission Prayer Center at Campus Crusade’s headquarters. “We can do a saturation this way.”

Scroggins said he believes it’s an appropriate time of year to deliver the video.

“It’s the loneliest, most depressing time of the year for many people in the country,” he said. “It’s a positive message of hope when many people are hurting and needing that message.”

Similar campaigns have been hit by a backlash from recipients who did not wish to see a video about Jesus. In heavily Jewish Palm Beach County in southern Florida, where the films were delivered this year at Easter, some people taped bricks to the videos and refused delivery, forcing many to be returned to post offices.

“The poor postman had to take that back,” Scroggins said. “They were kind of angered that they got it.”

Scroggins hopes that Orlando-area residents who don’t want the videos will throw them away.

“We’re not trying to force this on anyone,” he said. “They should feel free to discard it as they would any other mail that they don’t want.”

He said the coalition of about 200 churches involved in the video effort will follow up the deliveries with calls inviting people to watch the video and attend local churches. The racially and denominationally diverse coalition includes Catholics and mainline and evangelical Protestants.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Pope Prays for the Men and Women of the Third Millennium

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope John Paul II marked the Roman Catholic feast day devoted to the dogma of the immaculate conception Friday (Dec. 8) with prayers to the Virgin for “the men and women of the third millennium.”

The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary is a holiday in Rome, and large crowds gathered for the pope’s midday prayers and for his visit to Piazza di Spagna in the center of Rome at late afternoon to lay flowers at the foot of a bronze statue of the Virgin.

From Piazza di Spagna, the 80-year-old pontiff was driven standing up in an open car to the Basilica of St. Mary Major to preside over the singing of the ancient Acathist Hymn, a prayer-poem the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches use to honor Mary.

Although the service did not include representatives of Orthodox churches, the pope’s presence was seen as an ecumenical gesture underlining his commitment to dialogue with the Orthodox.

Some 50,000 pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square in mild but cloudy weather to hear the pope deliver the midday Angelus prayer from his study window overlooking the square.

“Help us, men and women of the third millennium, to resist the seductions of evil,” he said. “Revive faith, hope and charity in our hearts so that, faithful to our calling, we may know how to be intrepid witnesses to Jesus Christ at the cost of any sacrifice.”

A crowd of about 15,000 filled Piazza di Spagna and stood packed together on the Spanish Steps for the half-hour outdoor ceremony, most of which John Paul spent kneeling at a prie-dieu on an Oriental rug placed over the small cobblestones of the square.

The Polish-born pontiff, who has a special devotion to the Virgin Mary, blessed a basket of 250 deep pink roses, which was then placed at the foot of her statue.

The statue stands on top of a tall alabaster column placed in the square by Pope Pius IX in 1856, two years after he proclaimed the dogma of the Virgin Mary’s immaculate conception. John Paul beatified Pius IX on Sept. 3.

The pope prayed to the Virgin Mary “to help us to advance in the new millennium clothed in that humility that made you preferred in the eyes of the Most High” and to “keep the fruits of this Jubilee (Holy) Year from being wasted.”

_ Peggy Polk

Harvard Scholar Wins $200,000 Grawemeyer Award

(RNS) A Harvard professor who searched for the historical roots to taken-for-granted assumptions about the Bible has won the prestigious 2001 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion from the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the University of Louisville.

James L. Kugel, author of “The Bible As It Was,” won the $200,000 prize for his book, which tries to find the roots of common assumptions about biblical lore _ such as whether the serpent in the Garden of Eden was actually Satan, and whether Adam and Eve ushered in humanity’s “fall.” Kugel, an Orthodox Jew, says the ancient interpretations of biblical stories have become as well-known as the stories themselves.

Kugel argues that more attention should be paid to the early scholars and thinkers who wrestled with biblical texts and interpreted the common assumptions about the Bible, many of which are not actually stated in the ancient texts.

In addition, Kugel writes that Jews and Christians approached Scripture with a common set of beliefs and that the two faiths have more in common than some might think. Both groups “received the same set of attitudes about how the Bible ought to be read and explained, what it was for and how it was to be used,” he wrote.

Kugel has taught at Harvard since 1982, where he is a professor of modern Jewish and Hebrew literature in addition to teaching at Harvard Divinity School. His 1997 book was published in two editions _ a shorter version geared for general audiences and university classrooms and a version of more than 1,000 pages aimed at scholars.

The University of Louisville also awarded Grawemeyer prizes in four other categories. Pierre Boulez won the music composition contest for “Sur Incises,” and the psychology award was given to researchers Michael Posner, Marcus Raichle and Steven Petersen for their research in cognitive science.

Derek Bok and William Bowen’s study of race-sensitive college admissions policies won the education award, and author Janine Wedel won the award for ideas for improving world order for her book, “Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe 1989-1998.”

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Madonna Plans Buddhist Wedding

(RNS) Pop legend Madonna is planning to get hitched in a Buddhist wedding ceremony at a castle in Scotland.

“Madonna is a devout follower of Buddhism and she wants the whole thing to have a Buddhist feel,” someone close to Madonna told Britain’s Sun newspaper, according to Reuters.

Plans of the wedding between the singer and British film director Guy Ritchie, father of her 3-month-old son, Rocco, came to light Thursday (Dec. 7) after the registrar’s office in the Scottish Highlands town of Dornoch posted the required notice of impending marriages.

The couple will wed three days before Christmas at Skibo castle near Dornoch in a ceremony officiated by the Rev. Susan Brown, minister of Dornoch Cathedral. Brown is the first female minister of a British Anglican cathedral, according to the Daily Telegraph in London.

“This is a wonderful thing for Dornoch in the sense that it is going to bring a lot of people here,” Brown said. “This is important as it has not been a very good tourist season here.”

The Sun newspaper said the unnamed source also told them Madonna had banned white stretch limos and top hats _ too “old-fashioned” _ and hoped to have “an air of tranquillity” at the wedding.

“Her last wedding was a nightmare with helicopters buzzing overhead and was a bit of a disaster,” the unnamed source told the Sun, speaking of Madonna’s 1985 marriage to actor Sean Penn. That marriage ended in divorce four years later. “She doesn’t want to repeat those mistakes.”

Quote of the Day: Boston Cardinal Bernard Law

(RNS) “Religious freedom is not an arbitrary and subjective right but is one that defines fundamentally what it means to be human.”

_ Boston Cardinal Bernard Law in a statement celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom. Law is head of the international policy committee for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

DEA END RNS