Editor's notebook
Jordan, Patrick
three-way split among the rebels has turned them on one an- ...
...IL k religion, mercy, and charity...
...I guess that's the post-cold-war version of the old saying...
...Kevin in as spectacular an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy as Carter's haunting photograph (Time, April 5) of a small girl we are ever likely to see, has now had his apocalypse deliv- collapsed on her way to a feeding station, a vulture crouched ered to him not by God but by the FBI...
...And who could decline an invi- Alexis 11, Patriarch of Moseoir Commonweal 7 Mav 1993: 5...
...I found swer to the first...
...ernment in the north---bent on imposing Islamic For his part, Wolf has gone on a fast to alert his colleagues law on the country--and the Christians and an- and constituents about Sudan...
...The setting, ironically enough, Nikita Khrushchev had promised to display "the last living priest...
...The deliveries to one of the most desperate areas...
...In the last year, a Resolution 94...
...religious leaders from the United States met for three days There was a great irony in this, for 1988 was the year in which with our Russian counterparts...
...The ten-year-long civil his office on Latin America and other issues, on Sudan "I hear war between the Islamic "fundamentalist" gov- silence...
...in the roar of thunder when the clouds sor of the American delegation, the International Academy for opened up during Mass...
...Minorities within a country," the pope told the AN EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK general...
...Jeffords, and Feingold have sponsored Senate come more complicated and more deadly...
...Aware of the Russians' famous ability at chess, however, I did let the thought cross my mind that somebody might be interested in using us as pawns PRAY FOR IT in a domestic struggle far more convoluted than met a lawyer's RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN RUSSIA eye scanning a draft statute for legal difficulties...
...Recently, however, word has drifted westward that changes were being contemplated in this important statute...
...For example, an article last month in Isvestia blasted the creation of a new Experts' Consultative Council on religious matters...
...That represented major progress after seven decades of Communist rule that did its level best to impose atheism as the official state religion and to eliminate all exercise of other religious convictions...
...From abroad there ought to come a mighty roar where, but in Russia-as any reader of Dostoevski knows-it of voices...
...Former larly shaped orbit" as a result of beatings while in government cult members have spoken of Koresh's mesmerizing powers detention, and tells of other victims, their skin scarred with chemand many of them may have been among those "lost souls" ical burns, their right hands severed as the result of what she that seek the security and certainty of such cult leaders...
...and Bread for the World has proven itself again a plain-spoken and reliable watchman...
...But a more skeptical scrutiny of the Sudan are severely malnourished...
...I was one of several legal scholars lucky enough to receive an official invitation for a consultation on this statute from V.S...
...But, as Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va...
...Inquiries and investigations have been promised by Attorney An estimated 4 million people are at risk of starvation in Sudan...
...specific decision to storm the walls and spray the tear gas...
...She mentions caring for an old man whose face was Branch Davidians as a breakaway group of the Seventh-day "lopsided with one sightless eye deeply sunken into an irreguAdventists, were very much of Koresh's own devising...
...and our sackcloth and ashes turned to Freedom of Religion and Belief, and packed my bags for excitement and joy...
...PATRICK JORDAN is more so...
...With the collapse of the Soviet Union it is this statute that now governs in Russia...
...told Mary McGrory of The news that reaches the West from war-tom Sudan the Washington Post last month, while church people flooded is scant but horrifying...
...That must change...
...I read the briefing book prepared by the sponit in the small things...
...I suppose it might be thought ungracious for a guest to wonREPORT FROM MOSCOW der why he had been invited at all...
...southern Sudan...
...Polosin, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet's Committee for Freedom of Conscience, Religion, Mercy, and Charity...
...have the right to exist, with their own language, culture, and traditions, and the state is morally obliged to leave room for their identity and self-expression.A DEADLY SILENCE In the United States, however, the churches have proven to FAINT VOICES ON SUDAN be entirely too soft-spoken...
...and that more than or recent...
...Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk condemned the draft outright, while the apostolic administrator of the Catholic church in Russia, Thadeus Kondrusiewicz, took more focused aim at new provisions requiring registration of religious associations with the council and regular reporting of their activities...
...Centers for Disease Control report says that as Perhaps she did her best in approving what now appears to have many as 80 percent of the children in some areas of Southern been a senseless assault...
...Reno...
...For here, rain means not only the possi- Moscow...
...Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you...
...publicized U.S...
...The of Catholic University, Cole Durham of Brigham Young, president should condemn Khartoum's human rights abuses and Douglas Laycock of Texas, and James Wood of Baylor for conpush the UN to increase assistance to humanitarian agencies in versations about these vital matters...
...As it turned out...
...Sudan's leader, General Omar Al Bashir, during a brief stopover in Khartoum...
...Life can be complicated anypatter of rain...
...No on the scene told the New York Times (April 18) that it "was one seems to he saying that the reports of child abuse were solid the biggest misery you could ever imagine...
...Many justif ications for the FBI's gion was dealt a further blow last month when fighting between final decision are likely to emerge in the weeks ahead...
...Shortly thereafter the Russian Federation adopted its own statute, which was even more protective of religious freedom...
...That, of course, is not and waiting, was a graphic reminder of ethnic cleansing, among the FBI's responsibilities...
...three-way split among the rebels has turned them on one another with a vengeance, while the Khartoum government has pursued its relentless drive in the south, restricting press reports from the area in an attempt to cover up its misdeeds...
...But So far, the voices raised in behalf of Sudan in the West have what is surely to remain a puzzle is how two government agen- been too few and too faint...
...It calls on President Bill Clinton to appoint a 4: 7 May 1993 Commonweal special negotiator to work with the UN, the Organization of tation to join such eminent constitutional scholars as Harold African Unity, and the Sudanese to establish a cease fire and Berman of Emory, Jesse Choper of UC-Berkeley, Robert Destro to set up an internationally monitored demilitarized zone...
...A relief worker fatigue of the FBI team members seems a feeble excuse...
...Lee Miller has sent moving dispatches from the scene for the Lutheran, as have Maryknoll missionaries to the Catholic press...
...writes our missionary friend...
...Gorbachev kept his promise...
...There may well be some exculpating reasons for the 4,000 children at one center alone were likely to die...
...to who was trying to promote religious freedom and who was There ought to be more sounds of hope for Sudan than the trying to control it, if not stifle it...
...Sudanese style...
...But the UN has documented some of those brutal misdeeds, and the General Assembly not only condemned them but in March the UN established a special human rights commission to monitor the country...
...Food distribution to the reFBI plan was clearly called for...
...She has taken and according to Senator Paul Simon an as-yet-unfull responsibility for the operation and its disastrous outcome...
...In the Senate, Senators Simon, imists in the south, where they constitute a majority, has be- Kassenhaum...
...General Janet Reno at the Department of Justice...
...The answer to the second question proved easier than the an"Where is the hope...
...Looks like the research hors really came up with A Catholic missionary in the south writes us that conditions something this tune " have deteriorated seriously in the last five months: hunger is rampant, rebel infighting is fierce, and the government reguapocalyptic Christianity...
...But the issues of religious liberty that we were asked bility of planting a small crop, but also the end to the dry sea- to comment upon were subtle, and it was by no means clear as son offensive...
...But the cult's beliefs and codes, while larly detains, tortures, and disappears black Sudanese and rooted in the esoterica of the Book of Revelation and in the Christians...
...in 1990 he signed a new statute that protected religious freedom in the Soviet Union...
...What occasional reports do slip out of Sudan are numbing...
...Koresh, calls one of the government's "better known punishments...
...In February, thirteen African carcies lost all sense of proportion and took on themselves the crazed dinals made an impassioned appeal for human rights in Sudan...
...and apocalyptic behaviors that they found so alarming in their and Pope John Paul if, at his courageous best, spoke bluntly to adversaries in the Branch Davidians...
...Who could be against freedom of conscience...
...They the government and rebel groups forced the UN to suspend food should be stronger than those first offered by Ms...
...In the very week in March in which Russia was experiencing its latest constitutional crisis-which ended with two votes Five years ago on the occasion of the first visit of a that rejected both the impeachment of President Boris Yeltsin Soviet head of state to the Vatican, Mikhail for his attempt to expand the powers of the presidency and an Gorbachev promised Pope John Paul II that his pol- effort to remove his archrival, Ruslan Khasbulatov, as chairicy of perestroika or reconstruction would entail man of the Supreme Soviet-a group of legal scholars and a new era of religious freedom in the Soviet Union...
Vol. 120 • May 1993 • No. 9
