|
D r a g n e t
NO HATE CRIMES AGAINST CHRISTIANS
|
This Rock
Volume 10, Number 11/12
 November/December 1999 
|
|
|
A "disturbing double standard" is evident in the way attacks on Christians are viewed compared with crimes against other groups, according to Robert Regnier, a cultural studies writer at for the Family Research Council (FCR). Renier and others spoke to the Washington Times two days after 47-year-old Larry Gene Ashbrook, spouting blasphemous rhetoric, burst into a youth service at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Forth Worth, Texas, and fatally shot seven persons.
When Matthew Shepard, a homosexual university student, was murdered in Wyoming last year, and when shootings occurred in August at a Jewish community center in California, the media and many politicians swiftly labeled the episodes "hate crimes," said Regnier. In the Texas church shootings, he said, "I just don't see any of that."
Brent Baker, vice president of research and publications for the Media Research Council, agreed. "The media were very quick to draw the conclusion that the shooter at the Los Angeles Jewish community center was motivated by anti-Semitism," he said. But with Wednesday's shootings at the Texas church, reporters are "being much more hesitant to assign a motive."
When 14-year-old Michael Carneal killed three students praying at a high school in Paducah, Kentucky, religious bias "was never a theme raised on TV networks, that this guy was anti-Christian," Mr. Baker said. Instead, reporters focused on Carneal's parents and the influence of violent entertainment, he said, although "it became quite clear later on that [anti-religious sentiment] was the motivation."
In recent years, politicians and others have frequently blamed "hatred" for horrific crimes. After the April 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, President Bill Clinton named G. Gordon Liddy among the conservative talk-show hosts he called "purveyors of hatred and division," saying they were "encouraging violence."
Concerned over arson attacks on black churches in 1996, civil rights leader Joseph Lowery accused the Christian Coalition of fostering an "extremist climate." Gay-rights advocate Joan M. Garrysuggested that last fall's murder of Shepard was the result of a conservative anti-homosexuality campaign she said "fuels the fires of bigotry."
"When it is a particular minority group that's attacked, the media assume that's the reason for the attack," Baker said. "When it happens to Christians, the media don't assume that at all."
(Attorney General Janet Reno warned reporters that it was too early to characterize the Fort Worth shooting as a "hate crime," but said law enforcement authorities on the scene would uncover the facts. "We should not jump to conclusions," she said.)
Not all religious leaders agree. "I don't think we're seeing a concerted effort of attack on people of faith," said Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, executive director of the Interfaith Alliance Foundation. He blamed the killings on "a high level of anger, frustration, and mental illness among people in our society who have a ready accessibility to weapons."
One historian, however, has compared increased suspicion toward Christians to the Roman Empire's persecution of the early church. Harold O.J. Brown of the Howard Center for the Family, Religion, and Society wrote in March that he saw a "similarity between the way the Roman authorities charged Christians of that era with odium humani generis [hatred of the human race] and the way the political and media establishment charge the Christians with creating a 'climate of hate.'"
It's finally up and running: We received notice in July about 1-800-Mass-Times (1-800-627-7846), a service that allows the caller to locate automatically any Mass at any Catholic church anywhere in the United States. In presenting the service last summer, Bishop Robert N. Lynch of St. Petersburg, Florida, director of the Episcopal Communications Committee, noted that in "his recent letter, Dies Domini, the Pope reminded Catholics about the importance of Sunday Mass. 1-800-Mass-Times offers a practical way for Catholic travelers to be able to go to Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation."
After the service was announced, we tried the number, but weren't successful until early September. Based on the several tests we did for churches in our area, the service is pretty nifty. You can search for Mass times by zip code, postal area code, time of Mass, or language of Mass. Although the voice simulator sometimes mangles its words-"St. Joseph's Cathedral," a local church we located, sounded like "Saint Judith's cathedral"-the information was accurate. Don't take too long surfing through the menus; if you do, the friendly operator says, "Your time is up" and disconnects you.
Even more useful is the web site, www.masstimes.org. Here you can not only locate the church and Mass times but can be linked to a parish's web site or e-mail address. Additionally, if you want a map to the church, the site contains links to three Internet services: Map Blast, Microsoft's Expedia Maps, and Mapquest. We found Map Blast the easiest to use.
(By the way, our editor points out that, due to the amount of numerals in a phone number, the last two letters-"E" and "S"-are superfluous, and what you're really dialing is 1-800-Mass-TIM. But went tend to ignore his megalomaniac tendencies and suggest you do the same.)
The U.S. Catholic bishop's committee on marriage and family in September issued a report on cohabiting couples who seek a Catholic marriage. A 1995 nationwide survey by Creighton University found that 43.6 percent of Catholic couples were living together when they began premarital counseling with a priest.
The bishop's report, which is not a policy-making document, notes that living together out of wedlock is a violation of Church teaching. It also notes that cohabiting couples have a statistically higher risk of divorce. Citing two dozen scholarly studies, the report advises priests to help couples confront the reasons behind increased risks of divorce.
Many dioceses ask priests to urge cohabiting couples to live apart before the wedding, the report says, but under canon law a couple cannot be denied a Church ceremony even if they refuse. Catholic World News reported, "Traditionally, Catholicism worried that public weddings for cohabiting couples would scandalize the community. But the report says the social stigma has lessened.
The Church's true concern, of course, should be the state of the cohabiting couple's souls, not the sensibilities of the sommunity. And that concern should not have changed.
Controverse has erupted in a northern French village over the new priest's refusal to maintain an annual tradition of blessing people in their cars. Fr.Jean Vivien denounced the 97-year-old ceremony held in the name of St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers, as "more hocus-pocus than true Christian belief."
About five hundred pilgrims travel to St. Christophe-sur-Conde each year to take part in a Mass that is followed by a procession across the village square where they are blessed in their cars. The event is a high point in the village calendar.
According to the London Sunday Telegraph, pilgrims pleaded their cause for three months before the ceremony was due to take place in late August, but Fr. Vivien was unmoved. "The car has become a symbol of power in today's society," he said, "a symbol of which I do not approve. It is time that people became more disciplined in their faith."
"He's tampering with tradition," responded Jean-Marie Martin, mayor of St. Christophe-sur-Conde. "If we don't react then priests will think they can get away with any old whim. Everyone is acutely disappointed. It used to be one of the few chances we had to bring the village together to celebrate, but now we've really just been left to hang."
The mayor insists that St Christophe-sur-Conde, south of Rouen, was a site of pilgrimage for travelers long before cars were first blessed there in 1902. Its fifteenth-century church is peppered with nails that sailors drove into the walls to bring them good luck on their voyages. Fr. Vivien has said he is happy to bless boats, "as long as there are people in them." But he will not stretch the point to cars, saying: "A representative of the Church is not a spokesman for the automotive industry."
The mayor considered complaining to higher authorities, including Bishop Jacques David of Evreux. "I know it's odd for an elected officer of the state to go begging to the Church," he said, "but if Vivien doesn't start backpedaling then I will have no other choice. We have to put a stop to this now."
But even higher in the hierarchy, Martin's cause fell on deaf ears. "Within his parish, a priest makes the decisions that he sees fit," the Sunday Telegraph quoted Bishop David as saying. "The role of the Church is to bless people-not cars."
A recent unity pact between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal and Moravian churches has worsened relations with the nation's other major Lutheran denomination. The Evangelical Lutheran national assembly agreed to share clergy, sacraments, and mission projects, and to act jointly on major church issues.
A. L. Barry, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, says the decisions pushed the two Lutheran churches farther apart. "An even more serious erosion of a genuine Lutheran identity" will be the inevitable result, he says. Barry's conservative denomination, which avoids ecumenical involvement, has 2.6 million members. The Evangelical Lutherans claim 5.2 million followers.
Two years ago Barry attacked the Evangelical Lutherans' full communion pact with the Presbyterian Church (USA), Reformed Church in America, and United Church of Christ, saying longstanding differences between Lutheran and Reformed churches were not adequately addressed. Barry has also criticized the agreement on the doctrine of salvation by grace, or "justification," between the Lutheran World Federation and the Vatican, which is to be formally endorsed in Germany on Reformation Day, October 31 (see this month's cover story, page 10).
We hate to keep beating the same drum, but isn't this another example of the fruits of Protestantism? Can't both Lutheran denominations be right in their personal interpretations of Lutheranism?
New York's John Cardinal O'Connor wrote a personal letter September 8 to his Jewish friends in which he expressed "abject sorrow" for centuries of anti-Semitism by members of the Catholic Church. Jewish leaders had the letter published in the September 19 Sunday New York Times at a cost of $99,000 after receiving permission from the cardinal.
They said the letter goes beyond the official church line and last year's "We Remember" decree from the Vatican, which apologized for "errors and failures" of some Catholics during the Holocaust. A detailed footnote in the decree explaining the reasons for Pope Pius XII's policy during the reign of Nazism provoked strong Jewish protest.
"I ask this Yom Kippur that you understand my own abject sorrow for any member of the Catholic Church, high or low, who may have harmed you or your forebears in any way," the Cardinal O'Connor wrote. The letter does not mention the Holocaust, but New York diocesan spokesman Joseph Zwilling acknowledged the cardinal was referring to Nazi atrocities and other anti-Semitic acts of the last 2,000 years.
The cardinal referred to Pope John Paul II's bid to make next Ash Wednesday-March 8-a day for Catholics "to reflect upon the pain inflicted on the Jewish people by many of our members over the last millennium. . . . We most sincerely want to start a new era," the cardinal said.
Eugene Fisher, the U.S. Catholic bishops' staff expert on Jewish relations, said the cardinal has taken what Catholic leaders have said before but "put it in a way Jews can understand." The letter "expresses the mind of the church very clearly and without any possible ambiguity," Fisher said. "It's not a new statement. He was not intending to break any new ground."
But Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor who helped sponsor the ad, said O'Connor's appeal goes beyond past Catholic statements. "For a prince of the Church to say the things he does, it's very strong," he said. "He went very far and it's a great gesture of understanding."
In September the German press was reporting that the Vatican had stepped into a dispute over abortion counseling by Catholic groups in Germany. According to the reports, Rome said previous attempts have failed to cut off access to abortions.
Women in Germany are required by law to demonstrate that they have received counseling-offered by Catholic and Protestant church groups, family planning agencies, the Red Cross, and state health centers-before they can legally get an abortion.
In June, the German bishops bowed to a Vatican demand to stop tacitly condoning abortions by issuing women the counseling certificates. The Vatican likened the certificates to permission slips for abortions, and Pope John Paul II first wrote to the German bishops in 1995, telling them to make the church's anti-abortion position clear.
After a meeting last June, Bishop Karl Lehmann, chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, said a sentence would be added to the certificates issued by Catholic groups saying, "This certificate cannot be used for the carrying out of a legal abortion." But the Vatican said that addition failed to prevent women from having access to abortions.
The anxiety and sadness that often characterize man at the end of the century can be readily explained, Pope John Paul II told the more than 10,000 pilgrims who attended his September 22 audience in St. Peter's Square: It is the despair of the person who feels he cannot be forgiven. The Pope focused on the sacrament of Reconciliation, within the context of eternity and Christian life, to prepare for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000.
"Many have lost the sense of good and evil because they have lost the sense of God, interpreting culpability strictly from psychological and sociological points of view," the Pope said. But the central message of Christianity is the news of God's love that forgives everything. He said that Reconciliation "is a new encounter with one's own interior truth, disturbed and upset by sin, a liberation in the deepest center of one's being and with this, the recovery of lost joy, the joy of being saved-which the majority of the men of our time no longer experience." The anxiety of the man who lives away from God's forgiveness, he said, is one of the great challenges of evangelization.
Because of this, John Paul II wished to give personal and concrete advice to missionaries at the end of the millennium. He first addressed priests, to whom he said that "to be good confessors, they themselves must be authentic penitents. Confessors must not be careless about their own perfection and progress, in order not to fail in those human and spiritual qualities that are so necessary in relating to consciences."
|
C A T H O L I C A N S W E R S :
[TOP]
of
