c. 2000 Religion News Service
Nun Disciplined Over Baptism Participation
(RNS) A Jesuit center in Boston has decided to delay awarding its highest award to a nun disciplined last week because she violated church rules by participating in baptism ceremonies for two children.
The Jesuit Urban Center had planned a Nov. 17 ceremony to bestow its annual Imago Deo _ image of God _ award on Sister Jeannette T. Normandin, a member of the Sisters of Saint Anne well-known in Boston for work with women who are incarcerated, homeless or living with AIDS.
But last week the center fired Normandin and told her she could no longer live there because she helped baptize two children with the Rev. George Winchester. Winchester was also stripped of his duties and told to leave the center.
The Oct. 22 baptismal ceremony, held for the adopted sons of two gay couples, violated church rules that permit only ordained ministers to perform baptisms, except in cases of emergency.
Church officials said Normandin, who believes women should be admitted to the priesthood, wanted to make a political statement by participating in the baptism.
But Normandin, an 11-year veteran of the center’s pastoral staff, denied the charges.
“It was quite innocent,” she told the Boston Globe. “I wasn’t trying to make a statement. We were baptizing the two babies, and I blessed a baby with some chrism (oil). I didn’t know it was a no-no.”
The center’s director, the Rev. Thomas Carroll, denied speculation the award had been taken from Normandin, and said the ceremony had been delayed until next spring “simply to have the event in a peaceful time.”
Normandin said she was not disappointed by the center’s decision to delay the award ceremony.
“I think it might give us some time to settle down,” she said.
Two Synagogues in Canada Firebombed
(RNS) Firebomb attacks on two synagogues in Canada earlier this week are the products of anti-Semitism, synagogue officials claim.
No one was injured in the Wednesday (Nov. 1) attacks on Beth Israel Synagogue and Beth Shalom Synagogue _ both in Edmonton, Alberta. Beth Shalom was attacked first, and two hours later a small blaze broke out at Beth Israel after two firebombs were thrown through a window.
“It’s not a Halloween prank,” Marvin Abugov, a board member with Beth Israel, told the Associated Press. “That’s an egg or washing a window with soap. This is an attack against the synagogue.”
The attack at Beth Shalom was the second such attack in three weeks, an official there said.
“We have to consider this a hate crime,” said Neil Loomer.
Anti-Jewish sentiment has swept Canada and other countries in the wake of renewed Arab-Israeli clashes in the Middle East in recent weeks. No one has claimed responsibility for the Edmonton attacks. Police have made no arrests in connection with the cases.
ADL: Best Way to Fight Hate is to Display It
(RNS) The best way to fight hate is to display it, the Anti-Defamation League believes.
So the organization is displaying symbols used by hate groups as a way to educate people about the groups.
The symbols are on a special Web site linked to the ADL site (http://www.adl.org) and will be sent on hard copy to every school principal and law enforcement person in the country.
“It’s an early warning system,” said Saul Rosenthal, director of the Mountain States office of the ADL, which gathers information about hate groups.
The Hate on Display data base includes pictorial, numerical and other symbols used by groups the ADL considers extremist. The Web visitor can click onto each symbol and find out about the organization that uses it.
The various groups target all minorities, including non-Christians, people of color, immigrants, gays and lesbians, Catholics, Jews, Hindus, Muslims and Taoists.
Some hate groups even target the physically and mentally disabled, Rosenthal said. The aim of most hate groups is to preach that “the white, Aryan Christian is the correct model. Everyone else is inferior,” he said.
Rosenthal’s office gets many calls from schools and law enforcement officials about symbols they see as tattoos or on walls, on school books and a variety of other places.
“We’ve acquired quite a database and we want to share it,” said Rosenthal. The Internet has greatly increased the amount of hate material available to the public, he said. “Most of these groups don’t have a ton of members. But with a well-designed Web page they can look like a big organization. With the young being the greatest consumers of the Internet, we think they need to know what these symbols are.”
The leader of one group fitting Rosenthal’s description of a hate group blasted the new Web site and the ADL.
“I call them the Anti-Decency League,” said the Rev. Matt Hale, head of the World Church of the Creator in East Peoria, Ill. “If we’re a hate group, so is the ADL and the NAACP.” Hale’s organization believes the United States should be an all-white society and that all other races “should be repatriated” to the countries from which they came. “They have their own countries and we should have ours.”
He doesn’t like the new Hate on Display idea. “This means our high school students who are members of the Church of the Creator can be suspended from school if they wear their religious symbols to school. The ADL is a terrorist organization.”
Pope Calls Failure to Protect the Right to Life `Enormous Injustice’
(RNS) Pope John Paul II told members of the Council of Europe on Friday (Nov. 3) that they are committing an “enormous injustice” by failing to safeguard the right to life of unborn children.
Addressing ministers of the European Union countries in Rome to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing in the Italian capital on Oct. 4, 1950, of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Roman Catholic pontiff praised the convention as “a truly historic document.”
But he said the convention, which he described as “a unique legal instrument, seeking to proclaim and safeguard the fundamental rights of every citizen of the signatory states,” has not solved all the problems regarding human rights.
“There is the paradox that, on the one hand, the need to respect human rights is vigorously affirmed while, on the other, the most basic of them all _ the right to life _ is denied,” he said. The church opposes abortion and all forms of artificial birth control.
John Paul linked the right to life of unborn children to the campaign to abolish capital punishment, which he strongly supports.
“The Council of Europe has succeeded in having the death penalty removed from the legislation of the large majority of its member states,” he said.
“While rejoicing in this noble achievement and looking forward to its extension to the rest of the world, it is my fervent hope that the moment will soon come when it will be equally understood that an enormous injustice is committed when innocent life in the womb is not safeguarded,” the pontiff said.
Underlining the Vatican’s concern for the family, John Paul also criticized “a tendency to interpret rights solely from an individualistic perspective, with little consideration of the role of the family as the fundamental unit of society.”
Retired Methodist Bishop Inducted Into Women’s Hall of Fame
(RNS) Retired United Methodist Bishop Leontine Kelly was among 19 women inducted last month into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
Kelly, 80, was the first African-American woman to be named bishop in the United Methodist Church when she was elected to the position in 1984. She has been retired for 12 years and remains active in the United Methodist Council of Bishops’ Initiative on Children and Poverty.
Kelly was inducted into the hall of fame in Seneca Falls, N.Y., along with other notable women, including Attorney General Janet Reno; Frances Willard, founder of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union; and Crystal Eastman, co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The induction ceremony was held Oct. 7.
`West Wing’ actor Mike Farrell Honored at Catholic Media Awards
(RNS) NBC’s White House drama “The West Wing,” MGM’s romantic film “Return to Me,” actor Mike Farrell and his actress-wife, Shelley Fabares, have been honored by Catholic in Media Associates.
“West Wing,” the Emmy-winning NBC show, received the CIMA network TV award. The Catholic group noted that, “regardless of one’s politics, this series has been embraced for its portrayal of the government we all wish for.”
However, “The West Wing” has not always pleased the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. In its newsletter last March, the NCCB’s Pro-Life Secretariat noted the show was honored last spring by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for “a clear and strong pro-choice message.”
Still recuperating from a liver transplant, Fabares, 56, did not attend the lengthy Oct. 29 awards brunch and Mass presided over by Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, where she and her husband were honored with the CIMA board of directors’ award.
Known for his starring role in “M*A*S*H,” Farrell currently stars in the NBC hospital drama “Providence” and campaigns against the death penalty.
Transplant recipients were an awards theme due to Fabares’ operation, the presence of a group of transplant recipients in the Beverly Hilton Hotel audience and the heart transplant theme in “Return to Me,” which was in theaters earlier this year and arrived in video stores this week.
Quote of the Day: Bishop Margot Kaessmann, of the German Protestant Church
(RNS) “I think marriage is a wonderful thing. But I think it’s important that we can also tell God when we’ve failed.”
_ Bishop Margot Kaessmann, of the German Protestant Church, suggesting that churches help people cope with divorce by holding religious ceremonies to mark the end of a marriage. She was quoted by Reuters.
DEA END RNS
