Episcopal Press and News
News Briefs
Episcopal News Service. March 26, 2002 [2002-075]
Tutu assails South African government for accepting Zimbabwe's election
(ENI) Desmond Tutu, the former South African Anglican archbishop, on March 24 condemned his government for endorsing controversial presidential elections in neighboring Zimbabwe which extended incumbent Robert Mugabe's rule of 22 years for a new six-year term.
"I am deeply, deeply, deeply distressed that our country could be among those that said the election was legitimate or free and fair," Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said in Newsmaker, a current affairs program on South African public television.
South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique and Nigeria were among those countries that accepted as "legitimate" Mugabe's victory in the March elections.
The elections were found to be flawed by several international groups, including an international team of observers from the World Council of Churches and the All Africa Conference of Churches, and another team from the Commonwealth, which groups 54 states, many of them, like Zimbabwe, former British colonies.
The Commonwealth last week suspended Zimbabwe for a year over the election, saying that it was fraught with violence.
Tutu said during the program broadcast from Johannesburg, "When democracy is not being upheld, we ought, for our own sake, say it is not so. We do ourselves a very bad turn to claim that we uphold the ideals of democracy, freedom, freedom of speech and then endorse, as seems to have been done, something that was so clearly flawed."
In Zimbabwe, the country's council of churches lamented the continuing violence in the aftermath of the election.
"The government and other political leaders must speak the language of peace, tolerance and unity," Densen Mafinyane, general secretary of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, told Ecumenical News International.
Sounds of violence echo at Jerusalem meeting of religious leaders
(ENI) A Palestinian suicide bombing in the heart of Jerusalem resounded at a reception for Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders, intended to reaffirm their commitment to ending bloodshed in the Holy Land.
At least three Israelis, including a man and his pregnant wife, died in the explosion, which also killed the bomber.
The reception had been intended to mark the Jerusalem launch of an interfaith declaration aimed at promoting peace in the Middle East. However, the Muslim contingent failed to turn up for the gathering, amid speculation that they had been frightened away by the bomb.
Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, who heads what some refer to as the Alexandria group of religious leaders, said the attack on March 21 had only served to reinforce the urgency of the group's mission.
Speaking at the Vatican's Notre Dame Centre in Jerusalem, Carey said, "We have to think of two echoes going on at the moment, the echo of an explosion out there and the echo of peace in this room.
"Now, what are we going to listen to, are we going to allow the spiral of violence to continue - and it could continue for many, many years to come - or should we not listen to the strength of faith and say enough is enough?"
The group, comprising 18 leaders of the three great monotheistic faiths--Judaism, Christianity and Islam--was founded earlier this year in Alexandria, Egypt. The aim of the initiative is to find ways to end the Israeli-Palestinian violence that has raged since September 2000, and bring lasting peace to the region.
But despite calls for unity, the Alexandria group was showing signs of strain.
On March 21, Sheikh Mohammad Tantawi of Cairo's Al-Azhar University, who had co-hosted with Carey the conference in Alexandria, was quoted by the Middle East News Agency as calling suicide bombers "martyrs" for a just cause.
According to the agency's report, Tantawi said that "whoever blows himself up among aggressors" was a "martyr," although he added that bombers should not intentionally target "the weak," such as innocent men, women and children, since this was against Islamic law.
The statement by one of the leading experts of the dominant Sunni branch of Islam greatly angered Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Melchior, a rabbi who had helped foster the Alexandria declaration.
Carey said, "I hope that the words of Sheikh Tantawi were not correctly quoted."
He said that the Israelis and the Palestinians were two great peoples who had the right to live side-by-side, but added a note of caution.
"The big question that Islam has to face since September 11 is to find the theology of peace which we know is part of Islam," he said.
Although Muslim religious representatives were not present at the meeting at the Notre Dame Centre, Sheikh Taysir Tamimi, chief justice of the Palestinian Authority's religious courts, and Sheikh Talal Sidr, a Palestinian cabinet minister, met with other members of the Alexandria group earlier in the day.
Archbishop Carey suggested that the Muslim clerics had been frightened away by the bomb en route to the reception.
But that did not mean the religious leaders should give up their efforts. On a positive note, he said the Alexandria declaration had recently gained the personal endorsement of Pope John Paul II and the UN general secretary, Kofi Annan.
Consortium elects new officers and members
(ACNS) Katherine Tyler Scott, president of Trustee Leadership Development Inc. and noted author and leadership educator, has been elected president of the board of the Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes, headquartered at
Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. The election took place in New Orleans on March 2 during the 17th annual meeting of the membership.
Scott is an active member of Trinity Episcopal Church in Indianapolis, one of the founding parishes of the consortium. The organization was incorporated in 1985 with 11 parishes and assistance from the Lilly Endowment. It now includes 92 parishes throughout the country.
Consortium members believe that endowments are held in trust for Christian witness, and seek to be catalysts for evangelism and mission.
Scott will serve as president of the board of the Consortium for a two-year term. Other newly elected officers include: vice president, the Rev. James G. Callaway Jr., Trinity, New York; treasurer, Ernest Q. Petrey, St. Paul's, Cleveland Heights, Ohio; secretary, Jean H. White, St Paul's, Richmond, Virginia.
Tutu is keynote speaker at conference on the Middle East
(ENS) Retired South African archbishop and 1984 Nobel Prize laureate Desmond Tutu will be the keynote speaker at an April 12-13 conference on ending the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and an end to the violence in the region.
The conference is sponsored by Friends of Sabeel North America and will be held at Old South Church in Boston. Sabeel is an ecumenical Palestinian center for liberation theology in Jerusalem.
Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize when he was general secretary of the South African Council of Churches and a tireless opponent of apartheid. After apartheid was dismantled, he was asked to chair the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which heard testimony from both perpetrators and victims of apartheid.
The event will begin with an address by Bishop M. Thomas Shaw of the Diocese of Massachusetts on "Witnessing for Truth and Justice." Also on the program are Dr. Sara Roy of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard who will speak about the failure of the Oslo Peace Progress; Phyliss Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington who writes on Middle East issues and the United Nations; the Rev. Naim Ateek, director of Sabeel; and the Rev. Richard Toll, who chairs Friends of Sabeel, speaking in response to Tutu's address on "Occupation is Oppression."
For further information, contact Toll at 503-653-5880 or fos-na-admin@umich.edu or Issa Azar of Friends of Sabeel-New England at 617-489-5247 or sabeelconference@aol.com.
Clergy reporting rules considered
(AP) The child-molestation scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic Church has led to a push in some states for laws adding the clergy to the list of professionals such as doctors and teachers who are required to report abuse.
Over the years, many states, wary of invading the privacy that protects confessions and spiritual counseling, have placed no legal obligation on the clergy to report suspicions of child abuse.
Massachusetts, where the Boston Archdiocese is at the very center of the scandal, is considering legislation to require clergy to report abuse. So are New York and Wisconsin. New Hampshire added such a provision last year.
In all states, the law requires professionals who work with children--such as doctors, teachers and social workers--to report abuse. Twelve states specifically require clergy to report suspected abuse, according to the National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information, a federal agency. Several of those states exempt information learned during confession or spiritual counseling. An additional 16 states have laws saying in broad terms that anyone with knowledge of abuse should report it.
In Massachusetts, the House and Senate have each passed bills but have yet to agree on how to exempt the various types of conversations considered sacred by different denominations.
The majority of child abuse reports are filed by those required under law to do so. In Connecticut, for example, 62 percent of the 28,304 child abuse reports received by the Department of Children and Families in 2001 came from people obligated to report such allegations. The penalty under the various mandatory-reporting laws is usually a fine, and prosecutors rarely go after those who fail to report abuse.
In addition, states whose reporting laws extend to the clergy have limited definitions of the abuse they must divulge. For example, clergy in Connecticut do not necessarily have to report colleagues they suspect of abuse. They simply must report allegations that involve a teacher, guardian or caregiver.
St. Paul's relief operation to continue
(Trinity News) The Parish of Trinity Church has decided to continue its relief operation for recovery workers at St. Paul's Chapel on Broadway in New York City.
The vicar of the parish, the Rev. Samuel Johnson Howard, announced in a statement:
"The Parish has taken this step in response to an urgent appeal from the City of New York, conveyed by Commissioner Kenneth R. Holden of the City's Department of Design and Construction, who is responsible for overall cleanup work at the World Trade Center site."
Howard added: "Trinity Parish resolved three weeks ago to close St. Paul's for cleaning, in response to a notice received from the City's Department of Environmental Protection requiring that it clean the residues left on the building exterior after the attack of last September 11.
"However, Commissioner Holden requested that the Parish consider continuing to provide services to construction workers, firefighters and police officers until the city's work at the site is completed. We will defer our closing and cleanup until the end of May at the request of the commissioner.
"In his request to the leadership of Trinity Parish, Commissioner Holden noted that the relief facility operated by the Salvation Army and the Federal EPA is closing at the end of April."
The Rev. Lyndon Harris, associate responsible for ministry at St. Paul's, said: "We are delighted that we are able to respond to the request of the City of New York to keep the doors of St. Paul's open to the police officers, fire fighters and rescue workers as they complete their tasks at the site."