c. 2003 Religion News Service
Ten Congress Members File Brief Supporting Internet Law
(RNS) Ten members of Congress have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to declare the Children’s Internet Protection Act constitutional.
The American Center for Law and Justice filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the court on behalf of the members of the House of Representatives and itself on Friday (Jan. 10), the Virginia-based law firm said.
“There is nothing unconstitutional about the Children’s Internet Protection Act,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the firm founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.
“Without question, public libraries have a compelling interest to protect the physical and psychological well-being of children and that includes the type of material viewed by children in libraries. The First Amendment is not under attack here. The law is a reasonable and constitutional way to protect children from online pornography in public libraries.”
A U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia ruled in 2001 that part of the act violated the First Amendment because it required filters used by libraries and schools that also could block Web sites on health, science and politics.
The ACLJ filed the brief on behalf of itself and the following members of the House: Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala.; Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo.; Rep. Michael Collins, R-Ga.; Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Va.; Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.; Rep. Ernest Istook Jr., R-Okla.; Rep. Charles Pickering Jr., R-Miss.; Rep. Jim Ryun, R-Kan.; Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill.; and Rep. John Sullivan, R-Okla.
The court is scheduled to hear the case in March.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Orthodox Jews Hold Mass Bar Mitzvah in Russia
MOSCOW (RNS) In what was billed as the first event of its kind in Russia, 52 boys in black bowties took part in a mass bar mitzvah celebration Sunday (Jan. 12) as an ultra-Orthodox group embarked on a yearlong program offering free group bar and bat mitzvahs.
Sunday’s banquet, attended by the boys’ families and local dignitaries, was aimed partly at giving secular Jews a taste of Jewish religious life as practiced by the Hasidic Chabad Lubavitch, a dominant force in Judaism throughout much of the former Soviet Union.
“We especially need this in a place like the former Soviet Union, where a lot of the families have not yet been a part of the Jewish community,” said Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz. “Most of these kids are in public schools and so a lot of them don’t get invited to each other’s bar mitzvahs.”
Berkowitz said another 15 such events are planned this year in seven other former Soviet countries. With up to 200,000 Jews, Moscow has the largest Jewish community in the region. The mass bar mitzvah event was timed to fall on the 52nd anniversary of the day Rabbi Menachem Schneerson took over as leader of the Chabad Lubavitch movement in 1951.
Many of Sunday’s speakers, who addressed four rows of long tables of boys eating and drinking, talked about Schneerson’s vision for Russian Jews and a revival of Jewish life in a country known for pogroms and anti-Semitism.
“His idea was that whenever anything is done in a group it is more powerful than doing it in private at home,” said Berkowitz of Schneerson, who died in 1994 in Brooklyn where the group is based.
One of Russia’s two Jewish leaders claiming the title of chief rabbi, Berel Lazar, quoted Schneerson as he gave the boys advice on how to proceed with adulthood.
“Remember that every good deed, every good act you do, brings the day closer when the messiah comes,” said Lazar, as waiters brought the boys second and third and helpings of blini and potatoes.
The organizer of the mass bar mitzvah, Rabbi Mikhoel Mishoulovin, offered advice on how to cope in a secular and sometimes hostile society in which Jews are a tiny minority.
“Be proud to be Jews,” he urged the boys. “Don’t be afraid to be Jews!”
_ Frank Brown
Dove Award Nominees Announced; Many Multiple Nominations
(RNS) Christian artists Toby McKeehan, Michael W. Smith and Kirk Franklin were among the top nominees for the 34th Annual Dove Awards, the Gospel Music Association announced Tuesday (Jan. 14).
McKeehan, who uses the name tobyMac in performances, and Smith each received nine nominations and Franklin earned eight.
“Toby, Michael and Kirk truly represent the depth and breadth of Christian and gospel music today,” said Frank Breeden, outgoing president of the Gospel Music Association, in a statement. “Their music, as does our industry, spans the musical spectrum from worship to rap/hip-hop and urban gospel with many more styles in between. It’s a strength that I’m glad is reflected in this year’s nominations.”
Other artists with multiple nominations included Nichole Nordeman and Bebo Norman, with seven each, and Third Day, with five.
The Dove Awards will held in Nashville, Tenn., on April 10.
Nominations include:
Artist of the Year: Steven Curtis Chapman, MercyMe, Michael W. Smith, Third Day, tobyMac.
Female Vocalist of the Year: Natalie Grant, Nicole C. Mullen, Nichole Nordeman, Rebecca St. James, Joy Williams.
Group of the Year: Audio Adrenaline, MercyMe, Selah, Sixpence None the Richer, Third Day.
Male Vocalist of the Year: Steven Curtis Chapman, Bebo Norman, Mac Powell, Mark Schultz, Michael W. Smith.
New Artist of the Year: Big Daddy Weave, Daily Planet, Jeff Deyo, Paul Colman Trio, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Worship Circus, Souljahz.
Song of the Year: “Above All,” “Back in His Arms Again,” “Breathe,” “Come Unto Me,” “Great Light of the World,” “Here I Am to Worship,” “Holy,” “Ocean Floor,” “Spoken For,” “Yes, I Believe,” “Youth of the Nation.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
Pope Will Make Four Trips Outside Italy in 2003, Including His 100th
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope John Paul II will continue his travels in 2003 despite failing health and will reach the milestone of 100 trips outside Italy, but his visits will be relatively brief and only to European countries, the Vatican said Tuesday (Jan. 14).
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the 82-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff is scheduled to visit Spain May 3-4, Croatia June 5-8, Bosnia June 22 and Slovakia Sept. 11-14 and may also return to France to speak at the European Parliament in Strasbourg later in the autumn.
Vatican sources have said that the pope’s doctors advised him against making tiring intercontinental trips lasting a week or more and involving time changes. John Paul suffers from a debilitating neurological condition believed to be Parkinson’s disease and arthritis.
In the first 24 years of his papacy, John Paul made 98 trips outside Italy, visiting 130 countries, many of them more than once. He traveled a total of 1,237,584 kilometers, the equivalent of almost 31 times around the world or more than three times to the moon.
The pope will make his fifth visit to Spain to canonize a saint at a Mass in Madrid. In Croatia, his 100th international trip, he will celebrate Masses in Rijeka in the northwest, Dubrovnik on the central coast, Osijek in the south and Djakovo in the east and beatify a candidate for sainthood.
On his second trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Polish-born pope will visit the Orthodox Serb stronghold of Banja Luka for another beatification. He also will preside at a beatification on his third visit to Slovakia.
Patrick Cox, the Irish president of the European Parliament, invited John Paul during an audience at the Vatican Jan. 3 to address the parliament for the second time to mark the entrance of former Soviet bloc countries into the European Union, which the pope strongly supported.
_ Peggy Polk
Study: Forty Percent of Nuns Sexually Abused or Harassed
(RNS) Nearly 40 percent of American nuns have been sexually abused or harassed, according to a little-noticed 1998 study that was reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The study, paid for by several women’s religious orders and conducted at St. Louis University, found that a “minimum” of 34,000 sisters had been either sexually abused, exploited or harassed, sometimes by other nuns or priests.
“These women have been the stalwarts of the church for centuries, and a significant percentage of them have been victimized as a result of the structure of the very institution to which they have dedicated their lives,” study co-author John T. Chibnall, a professor at St. Louis University, told the Post-Dispatch.
The study of 1,164 nuns was intentionally kept quiet under an agreement with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), a national umbrella group representing 75,000 nuns. Chibnall said the nuns didn’t want to “wash our dirty laundry in public.”
Nearly 20 percent of nuns said they had been sexually abused as a child, with the abuse at the hands of priests or nuns in 9 percent of cases. One in eight nuns said they had been sexually exploited or pressured for sex.
One nun said she avoided confession for 18 years after a priest fondled her during confession, and another said a priest-therapist encouraged her to explore “sexual experimentation.”
Almost one in 10 nuns said they had been sexually harassed since becoming a nun, with half of the cases involving other nuns or church officials.
Ann Wolf, another researcher, told the Post-Dispatch that the church has overlooked the sexual abuse of nuns in their zeal to deal with sexual abuse of minors by clergy. “The bishops appear to be only looking at the issue of child sexual abuse, but the problem is bigger than that. Catholic sisters are being violated, in their ministries, at work, in pastoral counseling.”
Officials at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said they were unaware of the study and could not comment on it.
LCWR Executive Director Carole Shinnick said there was no cover-up to the study; she said the sisters want to avoid it being “sensationalized” by the media. She said there were “few surprises” in the study because nuns have been dealing with abuse for decades.
“Long before the results of the study appeared, congregations of women religious were attuned to the issue, and had invested large amounts of time, energy and resources in the healing of their members,” she said in a statement.
Attorney General Endorses Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative
WASHINGTON (RNS) Attorney General John Ashcroft has weighed in on the Bush administration’s efforts to increase government funding of religious social services, saying that “occasional bigotry” has prevented some faith-based groups from competing for funding.
“Out of fear, ignorance and occasional bigotry, faith-based groups have been prohibited from competing for federal funding on a level playing field with secular groups,” he said in a Monday (Jan. 13) speech whose text was released at the Justice Department.
“For the first time in a long time, our leaders in Washington understand what Americans of all religious backgrounds have long held to be true: Through faith, all things are possible.”
Ashcroft spoke to a crowd of about 1,000 religious service workers in Denver for the third of five conferences planned by the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
The attorney general, the son of a Missouri Pentecostal minister, also quoted Scripture to open his speech, the Associated Press reported.
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me,” he said, quoting Psalm 103. “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.”
Critics of the White House plans regarding faith-based groups questioned the appropriateness of Ashcroft’s comments.
“I find it sad that the person who ought to be the top law enforcement official in America is actively trying to erase both civil rights and First Amendment protections,” said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Avalon Wins Inspirational Music Prize at American Music Awards
(RNS) The Christian vocal group Avalon was named favorite artist in the contemporary inspirational music category at the American Music Awards Monday (Jan. 13).
The four members of the group accepted their honor onstage during the three-hour program that aired live on ABC.
“Three months ago, we didn’t know there was an award for our kind of music here at the AMAs and here we are,” said group member Michael Passons.
Their win marked the second year that Christian music was recognized in a category of the awards ceremony.
The other two nominees for the honor were Jars of Clay and P.O.D.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Quote of the Day: Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.
(RNS) “I think if the spirit moves me occasionally to say a word or two of faith, I think it’s a very American thing to do.”
_ Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., announcing his bid for president in 2004. Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, was the first Jew on a major party ticket in the 2000 presidential race with Al Gore.
DEA END RNS
