Center to Celebrate Buddha’s Birthday

Chanting in Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, English and Pali, the ancient scripture language of Buddhism will reverberate Sunday morning through a Thai temple in North Hollywood as the multiethnic Buddhist Sangha Council of Southern California celebrates the birth, enlightenment and death of Gautama Buddha.

Vesak, also spelled Wesak or Visakha, will be observed in rites at most Buddhist centers closer to the full moon in late May.

In order not to present a schedule conflict with individual Buddhist congregations, the Los Angeles-based council will observe its 18th annual Vesak ceremony early in the month.

Japanese Buddhists observe Buddha’s birthday each year on April 8 in Hanamatsuri festivities. However, Japanese Buddhist representatives have joined the pan-Buddhist Vesak rites annually since 1994 as a gesture of unity within the 2,500-year-old religion.

The Venerable Havanpola Ratanasara, the longtime president of the council and the College of Buddhist Studies in Los Angeles, and the Venerable Phra Rajdham Videsa of the host temple will give a brief welcome at the 9:30 a.m. ceremony.

The ceremonies will end at noon, followed by a lunch open to the public. (213) 739-1270.

The red-tile-roof temple is at 12909 Cantara St., near Coldwater Canyon and Roscoe boulevards.

HOLIDAY

Novelist Chaim Potok and Gov. Pete Wilson will speak at Los Angeles’ largest Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony on Sunday afternoon at Sinai Temple in West Los Angeles. Thousands are expected to attend the annual commemoration, also known as Yom Hashoah, of 6 million Jews perishing under Nazi rule.

Potok, whose eight novels include “The Chosen,” “The Promise” and “My Name Is Asher Lev,” will address the memorial’s theme of resistance by many Jews in ghettos and prisons who practiced Judaism surreptitiously and kept the creative spirit alive with music, drama, art and literature.

Sponsored principally by the Jewish Federation, the Martyrs Memorial and Museum of the Holocaust, and the Los Angeles Holocaust Monument, the ceremony will run from 1:45 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the synagogue, 10400 Wilshire Blvd.

MUSIC

Three artists in contemporary Christian music--Crystal Lewis, Bryan Duncan and The Anointed--will sing in concert next weekend at two churches. They will perform Friday at Horizon Christian Fellowship, 5331 Mt. Alifan Drive, San Diego, and next Saturday at Calvary Church, 1010 N. Tustin Ave., Santa Ana, with concerts starting at 8 p.m. General admission $14.95. (714) 673-6701.

* Portions of Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” and a variety of American music will be performed by the combined orchestras and choir of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, 1031 Bienveneda Ave., Pacific Palisades, at 8:15 p.m. Friday. $12. (310) 573-7787.

* The Heaven Bound Sound, a choir that includes professional songwriters and performers at Sherman Oaks First Presbyterian Church, will perform at 4 p.m. Sunday at Good Shepherd Baptist Church, at 53rd Avenue and Figueroa Street in Los Angeles. Also appearing will be the Celestial Choir of Inglewood and four soloists. (213) 293-9006.

DATES

Former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley will receive an award Thursday from the Interreligious Council of Southern California honoring his leadership in promoting interfaith understanding. The luncheon at St. Augustine Catholic Church in Culver City also will feature a talk by Marian Bergeson of the state Office of Child Development. (213) 250-8787.

* Madeleine L’Engle, a prolific author widely admired in religious circles, will speak at 10 a.m. Wednesday and Thursday in Pasadena as a part of Fuller Theological Seminary’s annual women’s lectures. Her 50 books include “A Wrinkle in Time” and “A Swiftly Tilting Planet.” The talks are at First United Methodist Church, 500 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. (818) 304-3772.

* A spiritual retreat on May 17 is planned by the Entertainment Fellowship, an Encino-based association of more than 2,000 industry professionals, on the theme of “dealing with superficiality” in Hollywood. One workshop will pose the career question: “When to compromise and when not to?” Three Catholic priests will be the featured retreat speakers at the Claretian Renewal Center, 1119 Westchester Place, in Los Angeles. The registration deadline is Friday. (818) 809-0841.

* A national teleconference on questions of intercommunion and deeper ecumenical links facing five Protestant conventions this summer will be held Monday from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks. Discussions follow televised lectures by Gabriel Fackre of Andover Newton Theological School near Boston and Michael Root, director of the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France. (805) 493-3152.

FINALLY

When scholars write multivolume histories, they usually turn out books in chronological order. Martin Marty’s continuing “Modern American Religion” series and Kevin Starr’s tomes on California history come to mind.

But Robert Ellwood’s recent “The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace: American Religion in a Decade of Conflict,” comes on the heels of his “The Sixties Spiritual Awakening,” both published by Rutgers University Press.

Ellwood, a professor of religion at USC, will work next on books describing religious developments of the 1940s and ‘30s.

“It wasn’t entirely planned that way,” said Ellwood, who has written a dozen books. “I was fascinated by the ‘60s so much that I decided to write about them; then I did the ‘50s because I could remember things then too.”

The disadvantage of working backward is belatedly gaining insights into an earlier period--perspectives that could have guided writing about a subsequent decade, he said. Conversely, “the virtue of going the other way is that you are more aware of the ultimate consequence of earlier events that people at the time did not perceive.”

Notices may be mailed for consideration to Southern California File, c/o John Dart, L.A. Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311, or faxed to Religion desk (818) 772-3385. Items should arrive about 2-3 weeks before the event, except for spot news, and should include pertinent details about the people and organizations with address, phone number, date and time.

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PEOPLE

Sister Cecilia Louise Moore became chancellor of the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese this week, one of the few women in a U.S. diocese named to a post that typically goes to a trusted diocesan priest.

Moore served as president of Mount St. Mary’s College from 1967 to 1976 and is a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. She became an associate superintendent of Catholic secondary schools and colleges in 1978. After assuming greater educational leadership in 1986, Moore was named vice chancellor in 1994.

She succeeds Msgr. Terrance Fleming, who was promoted to vicar general of the archdiocese, a position often reserved for an auxiliary bishop. Also, Fleming remains moderator of the archdiocesan curia, or cabinet, and as such acts as the chief executive officer of the religious corporation.