RNSdigest_07_28

RNS Digest
c. 2010 Religion News Service

Priest under fire for serving communion to a dog

By Ron Csillag

TORONTO (RNS) — The Anglican Church in Canada is dealing with fallout following a published report that a priest gave communion to a dog.

One congregant has quit St. Peter’s Anglican Church in downtown Toronto in protest over the June 27 incident, in which interim priest Rev. Marguerite Rea gave communion to a man and his dog.

The Toronto Star reports that according to those in attendance, it was a spontaneous gesture intended to make both the dog and its owner — a first-timer at the church — feel welcome.

Peggy Needham, a lay official who was sitting near the altar, said that when it was when it was time for communion, the man went up to receive the bread and the wine, with the dog.

“I am sure for (Rea) that was a surprise, like it was for all of us,” Needham told the Star. “But nobody felt like it was a big deal, because it wasn’t a big deal.”

Needham added that she doesn’t recall the man asking for the sacrament for his dog. Instead, she said the priest leaned over and placed the wafer on the canine’s wagging tongue. No wine was offered to the dog.

The congregant who quit the church has also filed a complaint with the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, saying the sacred ritual had been desecrated.

Bishop Patrick Yu said he wrote to the parishioner that “it is not the policy of the Anglican Church to give communion to animals. I can see why people would be offended. It is a strange and shocking thing, and I have never heard of it happening before.

“I think the reverend was overcome by what I consider a misguided gesture of welcoming.”

Yu told the Star that Rea felt “embarrassed” by her action, but that the matter “is closed . . . we are after all, in the forgiveness and repair business.”

Anglicans reject move to ‘separate’ US church

By Kevin Eckstrom

(RNS) — Anglican leaders meeting in London have rejected a move to “separate” the Episcopal Church from the wider Anglican Communion, a proposal that officials called premature and “unhelpful.”

The proposal was offered July 24 by Dato Stanley Isaacs, a member of the Anglican Communion’s Standing Committee from the Province of South East Asia, according to a statement issued Monday.

The Episcopal Church has come under fire from sister Anglican churches for its decision to consecrate an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire in 2003, as well as a lesbian assistant bishop in Los Angeles earlier this year.

In June, the US church was removed from Anglican panels that host ecumenical dialogue with other Christians, as well as a committee that determines doctrine and authority.

But the 13 members of the Standing Committee — who are elected from the 44 member churches of the 77 million-member Anglican Communion — said formally exiling the US church was not the proper response.

“Committee members acknowledged the anxieties felt in parts of the Communion about sexuality issues,” the statement said. “Nevertheless, the overwhelming opinion was that separation would inhibit dialogue on this and other issues . . . and would therefore be unhelpful.”

The US church has two representatives on the Standing Committee:Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Bishop Ian Douglas of Connecticut.

At the Standing Committee’s last meeting, just days after the Diocese of Los Angeles elected its lesbian bishop, the panel called for “gracious restraint” on actions that would test the fragile unity of the communion.

When that statement failed to make any difference, Egyptian Bishop Mouneer Anis resigned from the panel, saying it had “no desire . . . to sort out the problems which face the Anglican Communion and which are tearing its fabric apart.”

Report: Anti-Jewish incidents remain ‘sustained and troubling’

By Alfredo Garcia

WASHINGTON (RNS): A Jewish group that tracks anti-Semitism has published its annual report of more than 1,200 incidents of assaults, vandalism and harassment against Jews in 2009, saying the level of incidents remained “sustained and troubling.”

“America is not immune to anti-Semitism, and 2009 was no different in this regard than in any other year,” said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the New York-based Anti-Defamation League, in a news release.

In total, ADL reported 29 incidents of physical assaults on Jewish individuals, 760 cases of anti-Semitic harassments and threats, and 422 reports of anti-Semitic vandalism in 2009.

This number of cases comes to about three incidents per day, said Deborah Lauter, the ADL’s director of civil rights, in an interview.
“Generally, these things are very underreported,” she said.

Most of the cases took place in states with large Jewish populations. The top four states included California (23 per cent of total cases), New York (17 per cent), New Jersey (10 per cent), and Florida (seven per cent).

The 2009 audit employed new methodology and evaluation criteria, the first makeover ADL has made in the more than three decades of reporting on the topic.

When analyzed using the old criteria, Lauter said that the 2009 numbers represent an approximate 10 per cent increase in incidents from 2008.
Overall, however, there has been no general trend to the data. “It goes up and down year to year,” she said.

Part of the new method includes a more conservative approach to categorizing incidents. The swastika, for instance, “is no longer exclusively used as a hate symbol against Jews,” the ADL report said, so it is included only if accompanied with clearly anti-Jewish markings.
Also omitted from the report were the more than 2,000 anti-Semitic faxes sent to Jewish centres nationwide by the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church.

“These faxes caused great distress among recipients and, had they been counted, the 2009 Audit’s harassment totals would have significantly increased,” the ADL report said.

The report also doesn’t contain statistics on anti-Semitism in cyberspace. Although Lauter said there has been “an explosion” of anti-Semitic sites, postings and comments, ADL is “not yet capable of quantifying the amount.”

“We try to keep track of them, but it’s just a huge number of people reporting it.”