c. 2000 Religion News Service
Bishops Give $550,000 to Immigration Program
(RNS) WASHINGTON _ The anti-poverty and social justice office of the nation’s Catholic bishops conference has awarded $550,000 in grants to help low-income immigrants overcome legal and housing barriers in their new homeland.
The bishops’ Catholic Campaign for Human Development donated the funds to the Immigrant Empowerment Project, which will help immigrant families secure housing, education, employment, health services and, ultimately, legal citizenship.
The project will be coordinated by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC), a subsidiary of the U.S. Catholic Conference which provides legal services to charities and diocesan immigration programs, in partnership with other church-run organizations.
The Rev. Robert J. Vitillo, executive director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, said it is central to the church’s mission to help legal and illegal immigrants.
“Our Catholic social teaching instructs that we not only `welcome the stranger’ but help newcomers assume their full rights and responsibilities in this country,” Vitillo said.
The need to welcome all immigrants was a major theme of the bishops’ fall meeting in November. The bishops issued a pastoral letter urging greater acceptance of immigrants within the church, as well as a statement calling for a major overhaul in the U.S. immigration system.
Donald M. Kerwin, chief operating officer for CLINIC, said one aim of the program is to help “mixed status” families in which some members are legal immigrants and some entered the country illegally. With strict immigration and welfare reforms passed in 1996, Kerwin said only about one-third of the “mixed status” families apply for citizenship.
“This effectively precludes their participation in our constitutional democracy and perpetuates unequal treatment,” Kerwin said.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Appeals Court: Ten Commandments On City Lawn Unconstitutional
(RNS) A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday (Dec. 13) that a Ten Commandments monument on the lawn of a government building in Elkhart, Ind., is unconstitutional.
The decision by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a district judge’s ruling that the granite structure did not violate the Constitution’s Establishment Clause.
“We cannot escape the conclusion that the purpose in displaying this monument was to promote religious ideals,” the appellate court ruled in a 2-1 decision.
The court also said the city did not try to “diminish its religious character.”
The monument, erected in 1958, became the source of controversy in 1998, when the Indiana Civil Liberties Union sued the city on behalf of two city residents who were offended by it.
Mayor Dave Miller said the court’s action “demonstrated a contempt for the principles of the foundation for our republic” and said his city plans to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I am deeply disappointed,” Miller said in a statement. “If these judges wish to see the fruits of a nation that does not revere the Ten Commandments, I invite them to move. They’re trying to create a despotic community here.”
Church-state separationists were pleased with the ruling.
“Obviously, we’re very happy about it,” said Ken Falk, legal director of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. “We think that the monument both was on the property to effectuate a religious purpose and also that people seeing it will view it as endorsement of religion.”
The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, also hailed the decision.
“The Ten Commandments have done pretty well for themselves for centuries,” said Lynn in a statement. “They don’t need any help from politicians in Elkhart, Ind., or anywhere else.”
Lynn, whose organization has been monitoring similar cases across the country, said he hoped the decision would “bring a screeching halt to the misguided crusade to display sacred religious texts at government buildings.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
Vatican: Haider Will Meet Pope
VATICAN CITY (RNS) – The Vatican confirmed Wednesday (Dec. 13) that Pope John Paul II will give a controversial audience to right-wing extremist Joerg Haider and a delegation of dignitaries delivering a Christmas tree from the Austrian region of Carinthia.
Italian newspapers baptized the 80-foot-tall, 81-year-old fir, which already stands in the center of St. Peter’s Square under 24-hour police guard, “the tree of discord.”
Left-wing and Jewish groups and World War II partisans strongly protested the visit to Rome Saturday (Dec. 16) by Haider, who is governor of Corinthia and a leader of the nationalist and anti-immigrant Austrian Freedom Party. The European Union imposed sanctions on Austria for six months after the party joined the country’s governing center-left coalition last February.
“The pope will receive in audience a group from Carinthia, which donated the Christmas tree, accompanied by a civil authority and a nun, Gov. Joerg Haider and the bishop of Gurk, Monsignor Egon Kapellari,” Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said. Austrian Minister for Social Affairs Herbert Hauptl, a member of Haider’s party, also will be a member of the group.
It has been the policy of John Paul and his predecessors to meet with public figures even if they do not agree with their stands. The pope touched off a similar controversy in the late 1980s by receiving Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, who was under fire for having served as a Nazi SS officer during World War II.
“The Holy See is open to everyone,” Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state, said last Friday (Dec. 8).
Navarro-Valls described the audience as a routine event held each year to thank the donors of the trees that John Paul began erecting in St. Peter’s Square in 1982. He noted that Haider was not governor of Carinthia three years ago when the Vatican accepted the region’s offer of a tree for 2000.
“We will come to Rome as angels of peace,”Haider told a news conference in Klagenfurt, Austria, Wednesday. “We want to give joy to the pope by bringing the Christmas tree for the Jubilee year.”
In addition, the Italian news agency ANSA reported, he said he wanted to teach a lesson to “a few Communist hysterics.”
John Paul will address about 30 of the 250-member delegation at the audience on Saturday morning but will not attend a tree-lighting ceremony in St. Peter’s Square at dusk.
“The Vatican is allowing itself to be made the instrument of Haider’s attempt to obtain moral legitimacy from the pope,” Leone Paserman, president of Rome’s Jewish Community, said Tuesday (Dec. 12).
Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini said in a radio interview Wednesday that Haider is free to travel to wherever he pleases in Europe. “We can say we don’t like him, but in Europe we have free circulation of people,” Dini said.
_ Peggy Polk
Report: Violence Against Jews Around the World Is Up
(RNS) Violence against Jews and Jewish institutions has increased markedly in hotspots around the world since clashes between Palestinians and Israelis flared up earlier this fall, according to an anti-Semitism watchdog group.
The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center says more than 100 incidents occurred in France alone during a six-week period in October and November. There Jewish worshippers have been stoned, synagogues firebombed, cemeteries desecrated and homes set ablaze, according to the report.
Second to France with the most anti-Semitic reports in recent months was the United Kingdom with 21 incidents since late September. The United States, Belgium, Canada and Germany all reported more than five incidents over the same time period.
When asked to interpret its report, the Center referred questions to the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
“Events in the Middle East have served to motivate all sorts of extremist groups who have it in for Jews, wherever they may be,” said embassy spokesman Mark Regev. “I’m not sure there is any rational explanation.”
The Weisenthal report, which was last updated on Nov. 30, blames Arabs for certain incidents, Muslims for others and refrains from naming the perpetrators of the rest.
Since September, hundreds have died in clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the streets of Israel. The Israeli government “is concerned” about what it sees as a related trend of escalating violence against Jews in other nations, Regev said.
Most of the alleged incidents occurred in major cities: Paris, London and Montreal, for instance. In the United States, incidents took place in New York City; Chicago; Syracuse, N.Y.; St. Paul, Minn.; and Harrisburg, Pa.
_ G. Jeffrey MacDonald
Dick Clark’s Company to Produce Televised Dove Awards
(RNS) The production company led by entertainer Dick Clark has signed a long-term agreement to produce the Gospel Music Association’s Dove Awards for television.
The exclusive agreement, announced Dec. 12, puts dick clark productions in charge of the televised 32nd annual awards ceremony for contemporary Christian and gospel music, to be held April 26, 2001 in Nashville, Tenn.
“We are very pleased to be working with the Gospel Music Association to add this production to our company’s distinguished lineup of awards shows,” said Dick Clark, chairman and chief executive officer of dick clark productions. “We hope that the Dove Awards will become an annual televised event.”
Clark’s company also produces the American Music Awards, The Golden Globe Awards, The Academy of Country Music Awards and the Daytime Emmy Awards.
The Gospel Music Association, dick clark productions and the William Morris Agency, a talent and literary agency, are in the midst of discussions with television outlets about airing the ceremony.
“Dick clark productions is unmatched when it comes to successfully and creatively producing awards shows,” said Frank Breeden, president of the association, in a statement. “We are confident that this affiliation, along with our relationship with the William Morris Agency, will demonstrate to the television community the value and future potential of the Dove Awards.”
The awards ceremony has been syndicated for the past three years. Previously, it aired on cable networks such as TNN and The Family Channel.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Head of Ukrainian Catholic Church Dies at 86
MOSCOW (RNS) The long ailing head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, Cardinal Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky, died Thursday (Dec. 13) at his residence in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, headquarters of the 5-million member branch of Catholicism. He was 86.
Lubachivsky’s 16-year tenure as major archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church spanned the church’s emergence from the Soviet-era catacombs to a period of rapid growth that made it Ukraine’s second biggest faith after Orthodox Christianity.
The cardinal died early Thursday morning in his bed “of old age, not connected to any one thing,” said Anita Prokopovich, a secretary in the church’s patriachal curia in Lviv, on Thursday afternoon. She added that a date for the funeral would be set Friday.
Because the Ukrainian Catholic Church, which uses an Eastern Orthodox liturgy and has married parish priests but is loyal to the Vatican, was banned in the Soviet Union, Lubachivsky ruled from Rome until 1991 when he returned to Lviv.
Even then, according to a church scholar, Lubachivsky was in a frail physical state.
“The move back to Ukraine was very difficult for him. He was already an old man. He needed constant medical care from day one,” said Archimandrite Serge Keleher, a Catholic priest and Dublin-based editor of Eastern Churches Journal. “I think he would have resigned very gladly hadthere been a good field of candidates” to replace him.
Instead, the church’s General Council in 1996 named Bishop Lubomyr Husar as plenipotentiary auxiliary and charged him with running day-to-day affairs.
The hope, Keleher said, was that the move would buy time for seasoned candidates to emerge from the ranks of local clergy who had been denied access to formal theological education in Soviet times.
“There really hasn’t been quite enough time for that to happen,” said Keleher in a telephone interview from Dublin, adding that there was no clear candidate to succeed Lubachivsky when the church synod convenes, probably in late January.
Within the Roman Catholic Church, the Lviv post is especially important because the Ukrainian Catholic Church forms the front line of a centuries-old conflict between the Vatican and Moscow, headquarters to the 80-million member Russian Orthodox Church.
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexii II consistently cites alleged Ukrainian Catholic church proselytism, violence and persecution of Orthodox believers as the main reason for his persistent refusal to meet with Pope John Paul II, who is set to make a first-ever visit to Ukraine in late June.
_ Frank Brown
Quote of the Day: Former U.S. Ambassador James Laney
(RNS) “It’s a long, long road. It’s a bumpy road with a lot of twists and turns. But we should never think it is the wrong road. Sitting back and doing nothing is the wrong road. Bringing Korea to the brink of war is the wrong road.”
_ The Rev. James Laney, a United Methodist clergyman who served as U.S. ambassador to South Korea in the 1990s, speaking Dec. 8 at a Chicago meeting of Korean-American United Methodists about his support for the reunification of North Korea and South Korea. He was quoted by United Methodist News Service.
DEA END RNS
