Newspaper Page Text
ON INTER GROUP RELATIONS
PAGE 7-May 29,1980
Concern Over Possible Impact Of Inflation
BY TRACY EARLY
NEW YORK (NC) - The current economic recession could harm intergroup
relations if competition for jobs is “perceived on a group basis,” the newly
elected president of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) said.
And Jews are aware that “among those to suffer will be the Jewish
community,” said the new AJC president, Maynard Wishner, a Chicago
attorney.
“We reaffirmed here that the well-being of the Jewish community is
interrelated with the well-being of America, domestically and internationally,”
Wishner said at the AJC’s annual meeting May 14-18.
“Jews have a tremendous stake in the quality of life in America for its
people, and in the role it plays in the world,” said Wishner.
About 800 people attended the annual meeting of the AJC, a 74-year-old
organization working to combat bigotry and improve interfaith understanding.
Irving M. Levine, director of the AJC’s Institute on Pluralism and Group
Identity, issued a statement advocating political refugee status and federal aid
for Cuban and Haitian immigrants.
“We need to have faith,” he said, “that nothing infuses our country with
more spirit and creative energy than the self-help and mutual aid of immigrant
and ethnic communities working to make a place in the society for members of
their families and for their fellow countrymen.”
The AJC’s Interreligious Affairs Commission heard a panel including Msgr.
Jorge Mejia, secretary of the Vatican’s commission for religious relations with
the Jews; the Rev. Donald W. Shriver Jr., president of Union Theological
Seminary in New York; and Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, AJC interreligious affairs
director.
Robert S. Jacobs, chairman of the AJC’s Interreligious Affairs Commission,
said it was the group's first time to hear Msgr. Mejia, and that it was gratifying
to hear him express the importance given by the Vatican to relations with
Jews.
“There will be areas of disagreement, but there is dialogue,” Jacobs said.
Among the questions remaining unanswered, he said, were what positions the
Vatican would be taking in regard to Israel and the status of Jerusalem
The Interreligious Affairs Commission also heard the Rev. Robert L.
Turnipseed, a United Methdoist who chairs the National Council of Churches’
units for both Jewish and Moslem relations.
In the past, the AJC has accused the council of “anti-Israel” bias, and
development of a proposed new council policy statement favoring
self-determination for Palestinians and dialogue with the Palestine Liberation
Organization has troubled many Jews. But Jacobs said the AJC was not taking
any stand regarding the statement at this stage.
Jacobs said an AJC delegation would be going to Germany to see the
Oberammergau Passion Play on May 25 and would hold a press conference the
following day. AJC officials have been involved in extensive discussions with
town officials in Oberammergau and with representatives of the Catholic
Academy of Bavaria about alleged anti-Semitic elements in the play.
During the meeting, the AJC released a study of the 1980 Oberammergau
Passion Play by Judith Banki of the AJC Interreligious Affairs Department.
“A significant number of changes in the text for the 1980 performance has
been made in a serious effort to cleanse the play of anti-Jewish polemic and
prejudice,” she concluded. “Unfortunately, these modifications, well meaning
and welcome though they are, do not reach the heart of the matter, lor the
most part, the text has only been cut, not rethought; objectionable passages
have become much fewer and briefer, but the objectionable themes are still
there, and the way in which the story unfolds has not been basically altered.”
The AJC meeting also included presentation of $10,000 checks for aid to
Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees to three agencies: Catholic Relief
Services, the overseas aid agency of IJ.S. Catholics; Church World Service, the
aid agency of the National Council of Churches; and the American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee.
Philip Hoffman, chairman of the AJC’s Blaustein Institute for the
Advancement of Human Rights, announced the establishment of a fellowship
for human rights research. It was named for the dissident Soviet physicist,
Andrei Sakharov, who has been internally exiled to Gorky in the Soviet Union.
Addressing the meeting’s final session, Sakharov’s stepson, Alexei Semyonov, a
graduate student at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., urged that the cause
of Soviet Jews not be separated from other human rights issues in the Soviet
Union.
Dialogue 4 Way To Peace’
BY LIZ SCHEVTCHUK
WASHINGTON (NC) - Despite
centuries of separation, Catholics and
Jews are growing closer together,
according to Msgr. Jorge Mejia,
secretary of the Vatican Commission
for Religious Relations with the
Jews. And that, Msgr. Mejia noted, is
good news not only for Catholics and
Jews but for the world sis well.
In a Washington interview during
a visit to the United States the
Agentinian priest said that interfaith
efforts may help bring peace to a
world torn by violence but in which
the great monotheistic religions are
still significant influences.
Interfaith dialogue “is more
important than ever, to help solve
the great problems” facing humanity,
Msgr. Mejia, 57, said. He cited the
progress made in Catholic-Jewish
understanding and in contacts
between other Christians and Jews in
the last several years and expressed
hopes that some day such
MEDIA THUS Eh FOR TS
communication may expand to
include the Islamic faith as well.
(He added that Melkite-Rite
Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, once
convicted in Israel of smuggling guns
to Palestinian guerrillas and recently
involved in transfer of the bodies of
Americans killed in an attempt to
rescue the U.S. hostages held in Iran,
is not, to his knowledge, acting in the
Middle East in any official Vatican
capacity. ‘Certainly not,” he said.)
Moreover, three-way religious
issues aside, he said, there is plenty
to keep Catholics and Jews busy
improving their own relationship,
which has grown steadily warmer
since the Vatican II declaration,
“Nostra Aetate,” on Catholic
relations with non-Christian religions.
“Catholic-Jewish relations didn’t
exist in most places” prior to the
council, he said. There were the
results of centuries of
misunderstanding, isolation and even
persecution of Jews by Christian
nations to overcome, he stated. But
Vatican II opened the way to
dialogue, which has borne fruit in
such places as Latin America — once
a hotbed of anti-Semitism — and
through establishment of such groups
as the International Liaison
Committee (ILC), which links Jewish
groups and leaders with Catholic
officials. The committee discusses
matters of mutual concern, including
human rights issues.
There is “no question that the
humanitarian concerns that lie deep
in the heart of the Jewish people”
are similarly part of the Vatican’s
concerns and “part of its pastoral
mission,” he declared at a meeting of
the American Jewish Committee in
New York May 16. He told his New
York audience that those concerns
include security of the Jewish people
and Israel and called for more
cooperation in teaching and
publications.
In the past, as he told another
group in Dallas April 30, Catholics
and Jews were divided by such
theological and catechetical issues as
whether the Jewish religion was
finished with the coming of Christ.
But, as he said in Washington,
thanks to recent dialogue, those days
are ending. This is not to say
difficulties do not still exist, he
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obstacle as the Catholic and Jewish
faiths’ lack of symmetry. Catholics
are some 700 million strong
internationally, while there are some
30 million Jews only he said. In
addition, Jews in their religion are
more pluralistic and politically
oriented, concerned about a state —
Israel — while the Catholic Church is
more structured but encompasses
people of diverse nations, Msgr. Mejia
stated.
But he said he is hopeful about
the future. Now “there are open
channels” for discussion he said. “I
think this is a very important
development.” Without it, as he
added in New York,
misunderstanding could continue.
“The only way to avoid this is to
weep together, never close our
communication lines, serve each
other, and with each other serve the
world. And, in the best Judaic
tradition, be able to forgive each
other,” he concluded.
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VATICAN CITY (NC) --
Vatican-mediated negotiations of the
territorial dispute between Chile and
Argentina are at a “delicate stage”
and talks may be intensified,
according to a communique issued at
the Vatican.
The communique said more than
200 meetings have been held by
Cardinal Antonio Samore, Pope John
Paul IPs mediator in the dispute, and
delegations from the two countries.
“The mediation is now in a state
of particular importance and the
moment has arrived for a deeper
confrontation of the central themes
of the question,” the communique
said.
“The nature and complexity of
this delicate stage makes it necessary
that, from now on, the talks follow a
more adequate working method,” it
added. “It is now foreseen that the
talks between the delegations and the
mediator and his aides will be
intensified as the circumstances
warrant.”
The communique also expressed
the thanks of the delegations and
Cardinal Samore for a recent joint
statement by the bishops of
Argentina and Chile on the territorial
dispute involving a group of islands
in the Beagle Channel off the
southern tip of South America.
“The bishops’ document
constitutes, without a doubt, a
notable aid in the development of
the mediations,” it said.
The joint bishops’ statement
asked Catholics in Chile and
Argentina to hold mass rallies on the
Feast of Corpus Christi (June 8) as a
means of pressuring for a peaceful
solution to the dispute.
PEACE -- Dressed in white, a youngster
making her first Communion offers the greeting
of peace to a parishioner at St. Patrick's Church
in Johnsville, N. Y. She was one of 10 welcomed
to the eucharistic table. (NC Photo by Bruce J.
Squiers)
Court Warns Against Uneven Application Of Death Penalty
BY JIM LACKEY
WASHINGTON (NC) - The
Supreme Court, while reaffirming its
approval of the death penalty, has
again warned states that such a
penalty must be applied with strict
evenhandedness.
In a 6-3 decision released May 19,
the court overturned the death
sentence of a Georgia man convicted
of killing his wife and mother-in-law
because, the court said,
evenhandedness had not been shown.
“There is no principled way to
distinguish this case, in which the
death penalty was imposed, from the
many cases in which it was not,"
wrote Justice Potter Stewart.
Stewart was joined by Justices
Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell and
John Paul Stevens.
Two long-time opponents of the
death penalty, Justices Thurgood
Marshall and William Brennan,
submitted a concurring opinion, thus
giving the court its six-vote majority.
But in that concurring opinion,
Marshall and Brennan wondered
whether strict evenhandedness could
ever be achieved.
The court's decision applies only
to Robert Franklin Godfrey, who has
been on Georgia's death row since his
conviction for the 1977 double
murder. But it could have broader
impact as the court signaled its
willingness to monitor the
application of the death penalty on a
case-by-case basis.
'there currently are some 640
persons on death rows across the
country.
Much of the court’s reasoning in
the latest case was based on its
landmark 1976 death penalty case, in
which it ruled that capital
punishment generally was not a
violation of the Constitution’s ban
against cruel and unusual
punishment.
But in that decision, the court
said such a grave decision must be
made “so as to minimize the risk of
wholly arbitrary and capricious
action."
In the case of Godfrey, though,
the court found that the Georgia
courts were not careful enough in
their application of Georgia's death
penalty law.
According to Georgia law, the
death sentence can be applied in
cases of crimes that are
“outrageously or wantonly vile,
horrible or inhumane in that (they
involve) torture, depravity of mind
or an aggravated battery ...”
The Supreme Court, however, said
that in applying the Georgia law, the
court: which convicted Godfrey and
the higher courts which upheld the
death sentence did not specify what
it was about the Godfrey killings
which made them extraordinarily
outrageous, horrible or inhumane as
required by the Georgia statute.
Stewart noted that Godfrey did
not employ torture or severe beating
and his crimes were no more
depraved than other murders.
In their concurring opinion
wondering whether evenhandedness
could be achieved, Marshall and
Brennan noted that the Supreme
Court on a number of occasions has
had to reverse lower court death
penalty decisions because the
appellate courts have been unable to
guarantee objectivity.
“The disgraceful distorting effects
of racial discrimination and poverty
continue to be painfully visible in the
imposition of death sentences,”
wrote Marshall, the court’s only
black.
In dissent, Chief Justice Warren E.
Burger and Justices Byron White and
William Rehnquist said it was not the
job of the Supreme Court to second
guess juries or to tell states which of
their murderers should be given the
death sentence.
44
Responsible Opposition” Called Good For Nation, Church
WASHINGTON (NC)
“Responsible opposition” to
government and church policies can
work for the betterment of the
nation and the church, Msgr. George
G. Higgins, secretary for special
concerns of the U.S. Catholic
Conference, told graduates at the
Catholic University of America.
Speaking at the university’s 91st
commencement exercises on the east
steps of the National Shrine of the
Immaculate Conception May 17,
Msgr. Higgins said the kind of
optimism about the United States
and uncritical patriotism that were
common at the time of the
university’s founding are much less in
evidence today.
“Belatedly — but better late than
never — we have learned or at least
are beginning to learn as a people
that our nation, like every other
nation on the face of the earth, is
made up of men and women who arc
frail and sinful and condemned to
the human predicament — if
condemned is not too strong a word,
theologically speaking, in this
particular context,” Msgr. Higgins
said.
“It goes without saying, of
course,” he continued, “that
self-doubt and self-criticism can be
destructive of our basic values if
indulged in cynically or uncritically
or if carried to extremes.”
But, he said, “we are now better
off as a nation because Americans in
general and American Catholics in
particular are more willing than ever
before to question, to criticize, to
challenge, and, if necessary, to
oppose in a responsible manner, as a
matter of conscience, this or that
particular policy of our own
government.
“This kind of responsible
opposition, born of the conviction
that all nations and all peoples stand
under the judgment of God, is
calculated not to weaken, but to
strengthen the solidarity of our
nation,” Msgr. Higgins said, rejecting
the contention that opposition in
any community is “corrosive of our
basic values and inimical to the
common good.”
Msgr. Higgins noted that Pope
John Paul II, when he was a
university professor in Poland, had
written that every community must
be so organized “as to allow the
opposition that emerges from the soil
of solidarity not only to express
itself within the framework of the
given community but to operate for
its benefit.”
He continued: “At a time when
our own nation, because it faces so
many alarmingly serious problems,
both domestic and international,
may again at some point have to
contend with loyal opposition on a
wisespread scale, the pope’s advice is
very pertinent indeed. It is equally
pertinent in the life of the church
and the life of church-related
institutions of higher learning such as
the Catholic University of America.
“Though some would prefer to
think that unity in the church and in
church-related institutions means
uniformity, and that opposition, of
necessity, is synonymous with
disloyalty, the study of theology and
the study of history — which,
unfortunately, seems to be losing
ground even in our better universities
— suggests that there may be
something lacking in their
understanding of the nature of the
church and the nature of a Catholic
university.”
History records, Msgr. Higgins
said, that the great medieval
universities were “bastions of
freedom” and the Second Vatican
Council recognized that all Catholics
“possess a lawful freedom of inquiry
and of thought and the freedom to
express their minds humbly and
courageously about those matters in
which they enjoy competence.'
Urging students to maintain the
university’s tradition of promoting
social justice and human rights, he
especially noted the “demand on the
part of women in our society for a
greater measure of justice and
equality.” He said even the “most
progressive, far-sighted churchmen
and educators” have had difficulty
“in reading the signs of the times, so
far as this particular movement is
concerned and of dissociating
themselves from outmoded cultural
patterns.”
Msgr. Higgins said that “the real
test of this university’s success in
promoting justice for the poor and
the disadvantaged and for the
minorities in our society is not what
its professors say in a classroom or
publish in learned tomes, but what
its alumni and alumnae do as free
"and '"cbfhmiftetf citizens directly
involved in shaping the policies of
this republic. No institution of higher
learning can hope to do much, more
in this regard than to provide its
students with the critical tools of
judgment which will enable them to
play a constructive role in the world
of secular affairs and help provide
them also with the motivation to do
so with perseverance and
compassion.”
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