c. 2003 Religion News Service

Pope, Putin Agree on Need for Better Vatican-Orthodox Relations

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope John Paul II and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed at a meeting in the Vatican Wednesday (Nov. 5) on the need to improve relations between the Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches.

In an official communique, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls described the 30-minute meeting in the pope’s study overlooking St. Peter’s Square as “very cordial.” He said the pope and Putin also exchanged “views on the conflict in the Holy Land and on the Iraqi question.”

The communique made no mention of the historic visit to Moscow that the 83-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff still hopes to make despite his failing health and strained relations with the Russian Orthodox Church.

“In the conversation, subjects of mutual interest, concretely the Catholics in Russia and their ecclesiastical structure, were reviewed,” the communique said. “Both sides expressed the wish of a positive development in the dialogue between the Holy See and the Moscow Patriarchate.”

The meeting _ Putin’s second with John Paul _ came during a period of lingering coldness between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Vatican, set off by the Vatican announcement on Feb. 11, 2002, that the pope had established four full-scale Catholic dioceses in the Russian Federation.

The Moscow Patriarchy accused the Catholic Church of setting up the dioceses in order to seek converts among the Orthodox, and Putin’s government between April 2002 and February 2003 withdrew the visas of a Catholic bishop and five priests, who were foreigners working in Russia. Wednesday’s talks presumably were aimed at normalizing the Vatican’s relations with both church and state.

The Kremlin and the Vatican found common ground earlier this year in their joint opposition to the U.S.-led attack that deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The Vatican gave no details of the discussion Wednesday of the situation in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Navarro-Valls said the pope showed Putin the precious 17th century icon of the Madonna of Kazan, which he had hoped to return to the Orthodox Church in Kazan during a stop in the Russian city en route to Mongolia last August.

The Vatican canceled the trip because of hostility from the Moscow Patriarchate and the increasing fragility of John Paul, who is badly debilitated by Parkinson’s disease and arthritis.

While John Paul and Putin met, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state, held talks with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and other Russian officials on the same subjects.

The Polish-born pope has given priority during the 25 years of his pontificate to ecumenical dialogue, especially to ending the Catholic-Orthodox schism of 1054. In a message to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity on Tuesday, John Paul called promoting Christian unity “one of the great pastoral concerns of my pontificate.”

Putin has refrained from repeating the invitation to the pope to visit Moscow that had been made by his predecessors, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, until the patriarchate gives its approval.

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II so far has ruled out a papal visit or any meeting with the pope until their disputes over ownership of church property seized by the Communists and the alleged Catholic proselytizing are resolved.

Putin drove to the Vatican amid tight security after meetings in Rome with Italian President Carlo Ciampi and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Police closed his route to other traffic and cleared the streets of parked cars and trash cans.

_ Peggy Polk

Poll: Majority of Americans Say Gambling Is `Morally Acceptable’

(RNS) A majority of American adults consider gambling to be “morally acceptable,” while less than one-fifth of them think use of drugs not prescribed by a doctor is appropriate, a Barna Research Group poll finds.

Pollsters with the California-based marketing research firm found that 61 percent of adults surveyed said gambling was morally acceptable. While gambling scored the highest approval among 10 topics in the survey, the use of illicit drugs received the lowest percentage of approval _ 17 percent.

A majority of adults also said cohabitation (60 percent) and enjoying sexual fantasies about someone (59 percent) were morally OK. Forty-five percent said abortion was morally acceptable while 42 percent said adultery is morally OK.

Less than 40 percent said looking at pornography, using profanity, getting drunk or participating in gay sex was morally acceptable.

In most cases, researchers found that older adults surveyed were much less likely to consider the various behaviors to be morally acceptable.

For example, 51 percent of those 58 or older said gambling was morally acceptable while 75 percent of those 18 or 19 years old thought it was appropriate to gamble.

The overall survey results were based on nationwide telephone interviews of 1,024 adults in October and have a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

George Barna, president of the Barna Research Group, said in a statement: “Compared to surveys we conducted just two years ago, significantly more adults are depicting such behaviors as morally acceptable.”

Information suitable for a graphic follows:

Americans Who View Certain Behaviors as `Morally Acceptable’

Gambling: 61 percent

Cohabitation: 60 percent

Sexual fantasies: 59 percent

Having an abortion: 45 percent

Adultery: 42 percent

Pornography: 38 percent

Profanity: 36 percent

Drunkenness: 35 percent

Gay sex: 30 percent

Illicit drugs: 17 percent

Source: Barna Research Group

_ Adelle M. Banks

Christian Artists to Release CD to Benefit African AIDS Crisis Projects

(RNS) A benefit album inspired by AIDS activist Bono and featuring Christian artists will be released in January.

Sparrow Records will release “In the Name of Love: Artists United for Africa” on Jan. 27, the company announced.

Bono, lead singer of the rock band U2, met with Christian artists and music industry leaders in Nashville, Tenn., last December to raise awareness about the AIDS crisis in Africa.

The record company, which is based in the Nashville suburb of Brentwood, said the album was arranged in response to Bono’s request that Christian artists help alert church members to the epidemic.

“The goal of this album is to inform the Christian community about the crisis in Africa,” said Peter York, president of Sparrow Records, in a statement.

“Bono has been a powerful voice in raising awareness with this issue and it’s important for the Christian community to come alongside and help support this cause.”

The album will include tracks featuring such groups as Jars of Clay, Sixpence None the Richer, Nichole Nordeman, Delirious, Audio Adrenaline, tobyMac, Tait, Pillar and Sanctus Real.

A portion of the proceeds from the recording will be used to address the AIDS crisis in Africa.

The CD will feature written excerpts from “The aWAKE Project: Uniting Against the African AIDS Crisis,” a Thomas Nelson book.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Church of England Releases Study on Sexuality Issues

LONDON (RNS) The Church of England is a long way from reaching a common mind on the divisive issue of how it should deal with homosexuality and homosexuals.

That is the conclusion of a study guide to the debate prepared by four of the church’s leading bishops, published Tuesday (Nov 4).

The 358-page volume makes it clear homosexuality is not an issue the church can duck, nor can it ignore the differences that exist or pretend they do not matter.

“We have to ask how a common mind can be achieved on sexual ethics if it is not enough simply to tolerate diversity,” the report said. The basis and control of all the church’s teaching has to be God’s revelation of himself, it said.

“What this means is that what we as Christians have to do is to seek together to understand what the biblical witness to Jesus Christ has to say concerning the current diversity of sexual attitudes and practice and how we should behave accordingly,” the report added.

This means listening carefully to one another, and also listening “carefully but critically” to the tradition of the church. While it is necessary to recognize the diversity within tradition and to refrain from making the importance of tradition an absolute, it is important to listen to the voices of tradition in the area of human sexuality “because the fact that current attitudes have diverged so much from what has been the accepted Christian norm can lead to a strong temptation to think that what the Christian tradition has to say can have no relevance to our situation.”

“In fact,” the report says, “it is in times like this that we need to pay special attention to the tradition and to allow its voice to raise critical questions about current attitudes.”

Interestingly, among the theologians cited as arguing for a more nuanced attitude toward same-sex relationships is one Rowan Williams _ now archbishop of Canterbury. The report quotes from his 1989 address “The Body’s Grace”:

“If we are afraid of facing the reality of same-sex love because it compels us to think through the processes of bodily desire and delight in their own right, perhaps we ought to be more cautious about appealing to Scripture as legitimating only procreative heterosexuality.”

Williams continued, “I suspect that a fuller exploration of the sexual metaphors of the Bible will have more to teach us about a theology and ethics of sexual desire than will the flat citation of isolated texts, and I hope that other theologians will find this worth following up more fully than I can do here.”

_ Robert Nowell

Mass. Catholic Leaders Say There Is No Change on Partner Benefits

(RNS) Catholic leaders in Massachusetts say the bishop of Worcester did not endorse giving limited domestic partnership benefits to gay couples in recent testimony to state legislators.

Bishop Daniel Reilly on Oct. 23 testified against a proposed bill that would allow gay couples to marry legally in the Bay State. The state’s Supreme Judicial Court is expected to rule soon on the issue.

Reilly said: “If a bill alters marriage’s definition or changes the meaning of `spouse,’ we cannot support it. If the goal is to look at individual benefits and determine who should be eligible beyond spouses, then we will join the discussion.”

Those benefits would include issues such as hospital visitation rights, survivors benefits, custody and education for gay and straight couples. Those benefits could presumably be granted without changing the legal definition of heterosexual marriage.

The Massachusetts Catholic Conference issued a bulletin titled “Don’t Believe the Headlines” that said Reilly was not endorsing legal rights for unmarried couples, gay or otherwise.

“Many press reports interpreted this as a signal of new support for same-sex relationships and `domestic partnership benefits.’ That interpretation is wrong,” the Oct. 28 update said.

The state conference said “not all relationships deserve public endorsement” by granting legal benefits or marriage-like rights. “Domestic partnership bills would recognize homosexual relationships for the purpose of extending various socioeconomic benefits. The church opposes this recognition,” the statement said.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Quote of the Day: Polish Philosopher Leszek Kolakowski

(RNS) “People become religious in many ways. Most of them were born religious; some come with their own effort, their own experience. It can never be through the way of rational deduction.”

_ Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, who has been named the first recipient of the John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences by the Library of Congress. He was quoted by The Washington Post.

DEA END RNS