We posted earlier about the surprise, and surprisingly strong, Swiss vote to establish a constitutional ban on the construction of new minarets, the towers that are one of the distinguishing features of mosque architecture.

Now comes word, via the BBC, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and others, that populist leaders in Belgium, Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands want referenda on the issue in their countries, too. From the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty story:

Geert Wilders, head of the Dutch Freedom Party, told the Dutch daily "Volkskrant" that his party "will call upon the government to make a similar referendum possible in the Netherlands."

And in Denmark, Danish People's Party head Pia Kjaersgaard welcomed the Swiss ban and said her party would also seek a similar vote.

Martin Henriksen, a deputy for the Danish People's Party, acknowledged that Denmark currently had no mosques with minarets. But he told RFE/RL that Muslim immigrants have to adapt to Danish society, not the other way around.

"There are plans in Copenhagen and other Danish cities to build grand mosques, and we oppose it in every way possible. And this could be another way to oppose it," Henriksen says.

The Swiss vote has drawn international condemnation from the United Nations, the European Union, the Vatican and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, among others.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Prison officials in New Jersey have agreed to allow a Christian prisoner to teaching Bible study classes and preaching at weekly worship services, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

THE ACLU said Monday it has settled the lawsuit brought by Howard Thompson Jr., who was ordained a Pentecostal minister in 2000 at the New Jersey State Prison, where he is serving 30 years to life for murder.

According to the ACLU, Thompson fell under a blanket ban on preaching established two years ago by prison officials. Under the settlement, the ACLU said, he now will be allowed to resume his ministry.

"The ban prevented me from responding to my religious calling to minister to my fellow inmates, something I had done honestly, effectively and without any incident for years," Thompson said in a statement distributed by the ACLU. "All I have ever wanted was to have my religious rights restored so that I could continue working with men who want to renew their lives through the study and practice of their faith."

"The right to freely express religious viewpoints without the fear of repercussions is one of Americans' most fundamental constitutional rights," said Edward Barocas, Legal Director of the ACLU of New Jersey. "It is gratifying to see prison officials in our state take that constitutional obligation seriously."

This being the second release relating to religious freedom that we’ve received from the ACLU in the last little while, we’re getting the impression that this is an area the organization, better known watchdogging the separation of church and state, is trying to promote.

The release describes the lawsuit brought by Thompson against New Jersey State Prison Administrator Michelle R. Ricci and Corrections Commissioner George W. Hayman as “just the latest in a long line of ACLU cases defending the fundamental right to religious exercise,” and includes a link to an online list of several recent examples.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Fresh from collecting more than 50 firearms at a gun buy-back in September, St. Gregory the Great Catholic Church is expanding the program on Saturday.

Volunteers will purchase weapons at both St. Gregory the Great at 1542 N. Gilmor St. in West Baltimore and St. Wenceslaus Church at 2111 Ashland Ave. in East Baltimore. The sessions are scheduled from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.

“Police officers who helped with the gun turn-over [in September] said that some of the handguns are especially dangerous because they can be easily hidden and used to threaten or harm,” Monsignor Damien G. Nalepa, pastor of St. Gregory the Great, said in a statement. “We appeal to all the citizens of our city to help stop the violence and turn in guns.”

Details, from a church release:

In the seven previous campaigns, more than 160 guns have been turned in at St. Gregory Parish. The process is anonymous, with no questions asked. Parish staff members and volunteers log the type of gun, and verify that it is unloaded and safe. At the close of the event, the guns are turned over to local law enforcement.

The program offers a $100 reward for each workable automatic or semi-automatic handgun or assault rifle, and a $50 reward for any other workable gun turned in. Some of the weapons surrendered in September included rifles, shotguns and assorted handguns.

The Catholic Review, the archdiocesan newspaper, provided a start-up grant for the program and is asking readers and others to contribute to a fund so that buy-backs may be held more frequently. The Archbishop’s Annual Appeal, meanwhile, has pledged to match any donation made to the fund until the match reaches $6,000.

Christopher Gunty, associate publisher/editor of The Catholic Review, projects that $15,000 will be needed to sustain four gun collections per year at the two locations. Tax-deductible contributions can be sent to: The Cathedral Foundation Inc., Attn.: Catholic Review Gun Buy-Back, P.O. Box 777, Baltimore, MD 21203.

More information is available by calling Nalepa at 410-523-0061.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional ban on minarets on Sunday, the Associated Press reports, barring construction of the iconic mosque towers in a surprise vote that put Switzerland at the forefront of a European backlash against a growing Muslim population.

Muslim groups in Switzerland and abroad condemned the vote as biased and anti-Islamic, AP writer Alexander G. Higgins writes. Business groups said the decision hurt Switzerland's international standing and could damage relations with Muslim nations and wealthy investors who bank, travel and shop there.

"The Swiss have failed to give a clear signal for diversity, freedom of religion and human rights," said Omar Al-Rawi, integration representative of the Islamic Denomination in Austria, which said its reaction was "grief and deep disappointment."

About 300 people turned out for a spontaneous demonstration on the square outside parliament, holding up signs saying, "That is not my Switzerland," placing candles in front of a model of a minaret and making another minaret shape out of the candles themselves.

"We're sorry," said another sign. A young woman pinned to her jacket a piece of paper saying, "Swiss passport for sale."

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
        

In advance of the Catholic Church’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees, Pope Benedict XVI is calling on nations around the world to integrate immigrant children into their societies and protect them from exploitation.

“These adolescents belong to two cultures with all the advantages and problems attached to their dual background, a condition that can nevertheless offer them the opportunity to experience the wealth of an encounter between different cultural traditions,” the pontiff writes in a letter published on Friday. “It is important that these young people be given the possibility of attending school and subsequently of being integrated into the world of work, and that their social integration be facilitated by appropriate educational and social structures. It should never be forgotten that adolescence constitutes a fundamental phase for the formation of human beings.”

Benedict writes that immigration “upsets us due to the number of people involved and the social, economic, political, cultural and religious problems it raises on account of the dramatic challenges it poses to both national and international communities.” But he adds that the immigrant “is a human person who possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance.”

He writes as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops prepares to turn its lobbying attention to comprehensive immigration reform. The effort is to begin with a postcard campaign in January.
Benedict writes that the theme of this year’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees, “minor migrants and refugees,” “touches an aspect that Christians view with great attention, remembering the warning of Christ who at the Last Judgment will consider as directed to himself everything that has been done or denied ‘to one of the least of these.’ ”

“And how can one fail to consider migrant and refugee minors as also being among the ‘least?’ ” Benedict asks. "As a child, Jesus himself experienced migration for, as the Gospel recounts, in order to flee the threats of Herod, he had to seek refuge in Egypt together with Joseph and Mary.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

We were looking on Thursday for families whose financial straits had led them for the first time in their lives to accept charity on Thanksgiving. At the Bea Gaddy "Thanks for Giving" dinner at Patterson Park, they weren't difficult to find.

We began the story in Friday's newspaper with Michael Briscoe, a truck driver from New Orleans who had come to Baltimore after Katrina in part for the city's churches; since being laid off by the state in July, he has come to rely on those churches for support.

We met Luminosa Nolasco, who arrived from Mexico 10 years ago, but has been out of work since falling down a flight of stairs last year. And Lorenzo Marino, who says his restaurant job does not pay enough to cover the everyday bills.

Gary Slavinsky says he has been unable to find steady work since he got out of prison in January. A recovering heroin addict, he was serving a sentence for robbery.

"It's definitely the economy," he said of his inability to string together more than a few days of construction work. "I had a heroin habit three years ago, and it was still easier to work."

Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army also reported seeing more first-timers this year.

"Of course there's more need - absolutely," said Peggy Vick, director of volunteer and family services for the Salvation Army in Baltimore. She estimated that one-third of the Marylanders receiving Thanksgiving baskets from the organization's Baltimore Area Command this year were first-timers.

"We've seen an upswing of people who have just recently lost their jobs," Vick said. "They've not only had one person laid off in their family, both people have been laid off in their family, and so they've had a difficult time trying to sustain their household."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported last week that more than one in seven American households experienced food insecurity in 2008. That was the highest level since the annual survey was initiated in 1995 and reflected the greatest year-over-year increase.

Of the 17 million food-insecure households, more than a third suffered "very low food security," meaning that the food intake of some household members was reduced and their eating patterns disrupted at times. In raw numbers, the number of households with very low food security increased from 4.7 million in 2007 to 6.7 million in 2008, a gain of more than 40 percent.

Read more at baltimoresun.com

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Charity
        

Roman Catholic Church leaders in Dublin spent decades sheltering child-abusing priests from the law and most fellow clerics turned a blind eye, an investigation ordered by the government of Ireland concluded Thursday.

The Associated Press has the story:

Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who handed over more than 60,000 previously secret church files to the three-year investigation, said he felt deep shame and sorrow for how previous archbishops presided over endemic child abuse — yet claimed afterward not to understand the gravity of their sins.

Martin said his four predecessors in Ireland's capital, including retired Cardinal Desmond Connell, must have understood that priests' molestation and rape of boys and girls "was a crime in both civil and canon law. For some reason or another they felt they could deal with all this in little worlds of their own.

"They were wrong, and children were left to suffer."

Read coverage from the Associated Press, The Irish Times and RTE.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Fresh from its legislative victory this month on abortion, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops plan next to turn its lobbying attention to comprehensive immigration reform.

The Catholic News Service has a story about the effort, to begin with a postcard campaign in January. Reporter Nancy Frazier O'Brien writes that the bishops want reform that would reunite families, regularize the status of the estimated 12 million foreigners now in this country illegally and restore due process protections for immigrants.

"We want to increase Catholic grass-roots support for immigration reform, but we also want to show members of Congress a strong Catholic voice and strong Catholic numbers in support of immigration reform," Antonio Cube, national manager of the bishops' Justice for Immigrants project, told reporters in a conference call.

The bishops have been successfully vocal on healthcare overhaul, winning new restrictions on federal funding for abortion in the House version of the legislation with a furious lobbying effort earlier this month.

Read the story at catholicnews.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (21)
        

The Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore has concluded that allegations of child sexual abuse against a Cumberland pastor are credible and will not allow him to return to active ministry, Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien said.

Monsignor Thomas Bevan, pastor of St. Patrick Church from 1997 until August, has denied the allegations of four individuals who say he abused them in the 1970s, O’Brien wrote in a letter to parishioners delivered at Mass over the weekend.

The archdiocese removed Bevan in August pending an investigation into allegations by an individual that Bevan abused him on a number of occasions when he was a student at the parish school of St. John Catholic Church in Frederick during the mid-1970s. In 2005, the archdiocese had investigated a similar allegation by a different individual, but concluded that there was not sufficient evidence at the time to remove him.

After the archdiocese announced Bevan’s removal in August, two more individuals reported that he had abused them when they were students at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel School in Middle River during the mid-1970s, O’Brien said. None of the individuals knew any of the others.

O’Brien said counseling assistance had been offered to the four individuals and to Bevan. O’Brien said Bevan’s faculties to function as a priest have been permanently revoked, and Bevan has agreed that he will no longer act publicly as a priest.

Ordained in 1963, Bevan was associate pastor at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Middle River from 1963 to 1974, associate pastor of St. John in Frederick from 1974 to 1979 and pastor of St. Mark in Fallston from 1979 to 1991. He was a temporary administrator at St. Mary in Cumberland from 1991 to 1992 and at St. Patrick in Mount Savage in 1992.

While at Mount Carmel, he taught at the parish high school; while at St. John, he taught at Mount St. Mary's. He also has been executive director of the Secretariat for Priestly Life & Ministry for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (now the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops), and has worked in the archdiocese's Office of Clergy Education.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
        

A new Web site is soliciting information about gay priests in the Archdiocese of Washington, it says, to use in a campaign to counter church activism against same-sex marriage.

“This site was created to provide you with the opportunity to save LGBT youth from the hypocrisy of priests in the Archdiocese of Washington who are socially, romantically or sexually active gay men, yet stand silent while Archbishop [Donald] Wuerl and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops increase their dogmatic war against gay families,” reads an introductory passage at ChurchOuting.org. “If you have information that a priest in the Archdiocese is gay (or having a heterosexual affair) please share your story.”

The effort, organized by liberal netroots pioneer Phil Attey, follows the pastoral letter approved by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops last week defining marriage as the union of a man and woman, and comments by Wuerl that legislation in the District of Columbia that would recognize same-sex marriage could jeopardize the social services that the archdiocese currently provides to residents of the city.

“The Church hierarchy has crossed the line in diverting the mission of the church from helping the poor and caring for the sick to waging political campaigns to strip LGBT citizens of civil rights protections,” Attey said in a statement. “We can no longer remain silent while this happens. Nor can our parish priests.”

A spokeswoman for the archdiocese declined to comment. Not so Bill Donohue, who said his Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights “is prepared to assist any priest in the Archdiocese of Washington who is the victim of harassment, intimidation or stalking.

“Whatever resources the priest needs, we will see to it that he is served,” Donohue said in a statement. “If radical gay activists want a showdown with the Catholic League, we will not disappoint them.”

The name ChurchOutting.org notwithstanding, the site says its goal “is not to force Catholic priests out of the closet against their will,” but rather “to aggregate reports on every gay priest in the Archdiocese, so that we can work with them, one on one, helping them stand up to the … church hierarchy's stand on this important issue.”

The site includes links that allow users to submit information.

“For generations, in Catholic churches across the country, LGBT youth are told they should be ashamed of who they are and that they should lead loveless lives as social and religious abominations,” the Web site reads. “The emotional, psychological and spiritual abuse inflicted on them by Catholic priests and our church hierarchy is in reality as damaging as the physical or sexual child abuse anyone would quickly condemn. Yet to this abuse, few raise their voices and say "ENOUGH!"

“It is shameful that in many Catholic churches, this abuse is being supported by men, who are gay themselves, leading closeted lives of self-persecution and quiet desperation.

“Even more shameful, is that many of these priests, while remaining silent, actually lead duplicitous lives rich with romantic and sexual relationships – both homosexual and heterosexual.

“This hypocrisy must end.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (41)
Categories: Catholicism, Church and State, Culture, Politics
        

The Baltimore Jewish Council, the advocacy arm of The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Greater Baltimore, has issued a Thanksgiving message of gratitiude for the state's leaders:

"In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, we reflect on these difficult times, and give thanks for all that we have. In doing so, we ask you to take a moment to thank Governor Martin O'Malley and the Board of Public works for all they are doing to protect Maryland's most vulnerable citizens," the council says Tuesday in an action alert to supporters.

"In particular, we want to thank our state's leaders for maintaining current funding levels for the Developmental Disabilities Administration. We also commend them for minimizing budget cuts to the Mental Hygiene Administration."

The council asks supporters to e-mail their thanks to O'Malley and his administration "for making these tough decisions with care and thoughtfulness."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

As expected, the Baltimore City Council on Monday approved a first-in-the-nation law that would require faith-based crisis pregnancy centers to display signs telling prospective clients that they do not provide or refer for abortion or birth control. Sun colleague Julie Scharper has a story in Tuesday's newspaper.

The legislation now awaits the signature of Mayor Sheila Dixon. Dixon, an abortion rights suporter, has not said whether she will sign it. Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien has hinted at a legal challenge should the bill become law.

Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who sponsored the legislation, called the vote "a step towards making sure that women have the information they need to make the right decision for their health and their future."

But abortion opponents say the bill unfairly targets centers that they say provide much-needed assistance to poor women.

"The thing that's most disappointing about it is not the particular signs that are put up or the particular bill itself, but the message that it sends," said Jeffrey D. Meister, the chief lobbyist for Maryland Right to Life.

"This is the first time in the United States that any elected body has chosen to vote to condemn pregnancy centers. Baltimore City has just said, 'We recognize you do great work, but politically we're going to regulate you anyway.' "

Read more at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)
        

Both sides of the abortion debate will be focusing on Baltimore on Monday, when the City Council is expected to approve a first-in-the-nation law that would impose new regulations on faith-based organizations that try to steer women away from the procedure.

The measure, introduced by council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake at the behest of Planned Parenthood of Maryland, would require organizations such as the Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns to post signs saying they do not provide or make referrals for abortion or birth control.

Proponents say such organizations give false or misleading information about the effects of abortion and birth control. Pregnant women, they say, should be told when they are not being given access to all of the options legally available to them.

Keiren Havens, vice president of Planned Parenthood of Maryland, says the local effort could serve as a national model.

"We've been very concerned about crisis pregnancy centers for quite a while," she said. "There's a growing national network of crisis pregnancy centers that are specifically designed to target what they call abortion-vulnerable women and deny them full medical information about abortion and contraception, including referrals for those services. And that's of great concern to us just as a public health issue."

"It's not asking these centers to provide any sort of service that they find objectionable," added Jennifer Blasdell, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland. "It's just asking them to disclose what is true."

But officials at such centers say the information they give is accurate. They say that making them advertise the services that they don't provide would be an unprecedented form of harassment.

"It really impugns our integrity," said Carol A. Clews, executive director of the Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns, which has two locations in the city and a third in Dundalk. "We are very forthright about what we do here and what we don't do. To put us in a position where we would have to put up a sign is offensive."

The Catholic Archdiocese of Maryland gives $100,000 a year to such centers, and allows the Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns free use of space at two churches. If the legislation passes the City Council and is signed into law, Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien says, the archdiocese is prepared "legally to address it."

"This is clearly a first step, and they're using Baltimore as a steppingstone, trying to manipulate our legislature into doing something that no other assembly has done in the United States," he said. "It's unheard of, and, I think, irresponsible."

O’Brien says the legislation is discriminatory, in that it focuses on organizations that oppose abortion.

"When Planned Parenthood puts out in their literature on their doorstep that they do not provide baby formula and care for pregnant women to find homes for the babies, when they're asked to do that, we can come to some kind of compromise on what this city is expecting of us," he said.

Havens says Planned Parenthood follows the same standard of care as any gynecological provider. While this doesn't include providing "clothes or infant formula or baby rattles," she said, it does include referrals for prenatal care and adoption.

"We don't see ourselves on opposite sides of the issue here," she said. "All we're saying is if you are an organization that targets pregnant women, you should, if you're not going to provide them with information, you need to refer them for information that they need to make their life decision."

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (164)
        

The Catholic Review has a story about a pair of unusual recent events at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg.

The first was a double rainbow. The second as the archdiocesan newspaper puts it, was the pot of gold.

A worker at the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes discovered two bags containing gold and silver coins. Shrine director Bill Tronolone, who has been trying to raise money to build a pilgrim center, thought his prayers had been answered.

Alas, it was not to be. The discovery of the coins, which The Catholic Review says were valued at more than $40,000, was reported to the Frederick County’s Sherriff’s department. The owner has since come forward to claim the coins.

“The owner just wanted a safe place to keep her life savings while she left town and in her thinking, what better place than the Grotto, right next to the statue of Mary,” Tronolone told The Catholic Review.

Read the story at catholicreview.org.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: Catholicism, Education
        

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has become the latest Christian denomination to spawn a breakaway church over differing interpretations of homosexuality, the Associated Press is reporting.

Leaders of Lutheran CORE, which opposed the decision of the nation's largest Lutheran denomination in August to welcome gay clergy, told reporters on Wednesday that they planned form an alternate Lutheran church body.

Lutheran CORE members believe the Bible condemns homosexuality. Other Lutherans, and Christians in other denonimations, have called for what some describe as a more inclusive reading of scripture.

Lutheran CORE leaders said they had heard from like-minded Lutherans and congregations from around the country, the AP reports. They said they didn't know how many ELCA congregations might join the new denomination, which they hope to start by August 2010.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

The American public remains concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism in the United States and around the world, but a survey taken shortly after the shootings at Fort Hood shows only a modest increase in these concerns since 2007, according to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Fifty-two percent of Americans say they are "very concerned" about the possible rise of Islamic extremism in the United States, according to a Pew survey of 1,003 adults conducted from Nov. 12 through 15.

That's up from 46 percent in April 2007. Meanwhile, the percentage who say they are "somewhat concerned" fell by a similar amount, from 32 percent in 2007 to 27 percent this month.

Forty-nine percent of Americans say they are "very concerned" about the possible rise of Islamic extremism around the world, up from 48 percent in 2007. The number who say they are "somewhat concerned" fell 33 pecent to 29 percent.

The survey began one week after the Nov. 5 shootings that left 13 dead an 30 wounded. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim of Palestinian heritage who is said to have been critical of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been charged with premeditated murder in the attacks.

Read the report at pewforum.org.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

Could the U.S. bishops rescind the right of the University of Notre Dame to call itself Catholic?

Months after the nation's flagship Catholic university ignited a firestorm within church circles by inviting President Barack Obama to give a commencement speech and receive in honorary degree, the nation's Catholic bishops met behind closed doors today to discuss increasing oversight of the nation's Catholic colleges and universities.

Obama supports abortion rights; the church opposes abortion. The bishops are holding their fall general assembly this week at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront.

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told the Associated Press that he had formed a task force charged with reviewing relations between the bishops and the nation's more than 200 Catholic colleges and universities.

In most cases, the bishops excercise no formal authority over the institutions, which, with few exceptions, operate independently of their local dioceses.

"Can bishops just pull the plug on us? It's not that simple," Richard Yanikoski, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, told the AP.

"If those relationships — which don't mean control, they mean relationship — are now weakened, then we have to think of ways to enter discussion in order to strengthen them, and to redefine perhaps what are the criteria for a university or any other organization to consider itself Catholic," George told the AP.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (21)
        

The nation's Catholic bishops had a busy day Tuesday, approving a pastoral letter on marriage, a document on reproductive technologies and a revision to an existing document on healthcare for the dying and chronically ill.

The bishops are holding their fall general assembly at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront.

"Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan" breaks no new ground, but bishops said it would provide a foundation for the church’s campaign to promote marriage as the union of one man and one woman going forward.

"Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology" reiterates Catholic teaching against in vitro fertilization, egg, sperm and embryo donation, surrogates and cloning. For infertile couples, the church counsels hormonal treatment and other medications, surgery to repair reproductive organs, and other means.

The revision to “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” underscores what the church says is the moral obligation to provide nutrition and hydration to patients in a persistent vegetative state.

The bishops also approved new English translations of the Roman Missal.

Read more at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The head of Catholic Relief Services is asking his brother bishops a favor: “Brag about us a little bit.”

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, who chairs the Baltimore-based relief agency, spoke on Monday to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is meeting this week at the Mariott Waterfront Hotel in Baltimore. Dolan said Catholic Relief Services, the overseas relief and development agency of the U.S. bishops, remains little known even among Catholics:

Even though CRS is recognized as a leader among humanitarian agencies for its professionalism, innovation and efficiency, the fact is that many of your parishioners have not heard of us.

I recently heard a troubling fact. CRS conducted a survey, using an independent polling agency, and asked Catholics to name a humanitarian agency that works overseas. And do you know how many mentioned CRS? Only 22 percent. And that was a huge improvement from the previous year, when only 11 percent named CRS. We have a lot of work to do! We do not spend a lot of money on advertising, as do other similar relief agencies, as less than 5% of our budget goes for overhead.

That’s why I’d like to ask a favor of all of you, my brother bishops. Because CRS is your agency, brag about us a little bit. Perhaps you could write an occasional column in your diocesan newspapers about the work of CRS. Perhaps you could encourage your parishes to get involved in Operation Rice Bowl, the CRS Lenten program. Or maybe you could encourage you priests to mention CRS from time to time in their homilies. Or better yet, they could get involved in our Global Fellows program – we send priests, deacons and seminarians overseas to see the work of CRS first hand, and they come back as some of our best ambassadors.

Dolan concluded with an anecdote that he said illustrated how CRS works, and the impact it has.

CRS serves people because of need, not creed. We don’t help people because they’re Catholic; we do it because we are. We evangelize by our witness. We testify to the faith through our charity. In case you think this message might be lost, let me share with you an encounter that the Secretary General of the Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat, Abba Hagos Hayish, had earlier this year. You see, CRS has donated several drilling rigs to the Ethiopian Catholic Church to tap deep groundwater. The borehole now provides 2,400 households with access to clean water. These are families who previously had to trudge hours to fetch clean water. This daily chore kept children out of school and made the lives of the village’s women much more difficult.

As Abba Hagos toured some of the communities benefiting from this work, he approached a woman filling a 5-gallong jug with water from one of the system’s taps.

“What do you think of this water project?” he asked her.

“It’s wonderful!” she exclaimed. “Look how clean this water is. Our life has changed.”

“Do you know who is responsible for this project?” Abba Hagos inquired. The woman put down her water jug and looked at him with a slightly puzzled expression.

“They call themselves Catholics,” she said, emphasizing the strange word at the end of her sentence. “I’m not sure exactly what that means, but we give thanks to God for their work.”

“By their fruits you will know them,” says Jesus. That’s evangelization.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Eight years after President George W. Bush unveiled his faith-based initiative, the involvement of religious organizations in government-sponsored social services continues to draw broad public support, according to the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

At the same time, many Americans continue to express concerns about the blurring of the lines between church and state.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans say they favor allowing churches and other houses of worship to apply for government funding to provide social services such as job training or drug treatment, according to the survey of 4,013 adults conducted from Aug. 11 to 27. Twenty-five percent say they oppose the approach.

With President Barack Obama now in charge, Democrats now are more supportive of the faith-based initiative than Republicans, according to the report. Support among Democrats has increased to 77 percent from 70 percent in March 2001. Support among Republicans has fallen from 81 percent to 66 percent in the same timeframe.

Americans retain some reservations about the initiative, according to the report. Sixty-nine percent view the possibility that the government might get too involved in religious organizations as an important concern. Sixty percent views the possibility that people who receive help from faith-based groups might be forced to take part in religious practices as an important concern.

Seventy-four percent say religious organizations that receive government funds to provide social services should not be able to hire only people who share their religious beliefs.

At the same time, when people are asked generally whether religious organizations, non-religious organizations or the government can do the best job providing services for the needy, 37 percent – a plurality – choose religious organizations. Fifty-two percent say religious organizations could do the best job of feeding the homeless.

Read the report, including details on methodology, at pewforum.org.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

In an apparent response to criticism of Catholic lobbying for tougher restrictions on abortion in the healthcare overhaul, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said church leaders have an obligation to raise their concerns in the debate.

The bishops opened their fall general assembly Monday at the Waterfront Marriott Hotel in Baltimore a week after lobbying successfully for an amendment to the healthcare bill approved by the House last week. The Stupak-Pitts amendment, named for the lawmakers who introduced it, would block federal subsidies for insurance policies that cover abortion. At least one Senate Democrat has said he would consider a similar measure as the upper body takes up the issue.

The amendment came as the result of a furious lobbying effort by the bishops’ conference, which has long called for universal health coverage but opposes abortion. The bishops’ role has drawn criticism from abortion rights supporters; Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a California Democrat, suggested last week that the IRS might investigate the bishops’ tax-exempt status.

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, the president of the bishops’ conference, said "issues that are moral questions before they become political remain moral questions when they become political."

George said it was the job of the bishops to be public without being "co-opted" by any political agenda and serve as "leaven for the world's transformation" in policy debates, the Associated Press reports.

"We are most grateful to those in either political party who share these common moral concerns and govern our country in accordance with them," George said.

On the agenda for the semiannual meeting are several items related to marriage and reproduction. On Monday, the bishops heard a presentation on “Love and Life in the Divine Plan, a pastoral letter that the conference describes as presenting “the essential points of Catholic teaching on marriage that are foundational for understanding the nature and purposes of marriage, for living it faithfully, and for preserving and defending it as a necessary and unique social institution.”

Also Monday, the bishops heard presentations on “Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology, a document discussing the moral issues surrounding various technologies for treating infertility, including in vitro fertilization, embryo adoption and surrogacy, and a proposed revision of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services that “states more definitively the moral obligation to provide medically assisted nutrition and hydration to patients in a ‘persistent vegetative state.’ ”

Votes are scheduled for Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the bishops are also scheduled to hear a report on efforts by the Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage “to promote and protect marriage as the exclusive and permanent union between a man and a woman.”

Read more at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

Here’s an odd one. The Associated Press is reporting that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi invited some 200 young Italian women to a party in Rome over the weekend, but when they showed up, they were given a lecture on Islam and copies of the Quran.

The AP says a reporter for Italy's ANSA news agency went undercover with the women, who were hired for 50 Euros (about $75) by a modeling agency for the event Sunday evening. Journalist Paola Lo Mele said the women assembled at a hotel, where some were left behind because they were not tall enough or dressed modestly enough.

Those accepted were taken to a villa, where Gadhafi lectured them on women's rights and religion, and urged them to convert to Islam, according to the AP.

"All the girls expected a party with a gala dinner," Lo Mele told her agency. Instead, "he made a 45-minute speech on Islam and women's role in Islam. It was a bit of an indoctrination session."

Gadhafi was in Rome to attend a U.N. summit on world hunger.

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Monsignor F. Dennis Tinder, the pastor who made the controversial decision last summer to close Towson Catholic High School shortly before the start of the school year, has retired due to health concerns, The Catholic Review reports.

The 67-year-old priest, who has spent the last nine years as pastor of Immaculate Conception in Towson, his childhood parish, cites a neuromuscular disorder that affects his strength and motion.

“We get so tied to this world with its shifting that we forget that we were made to go home,” Tinder tells The Catholic Review. “The God who made us is holding us and carrying us home.”

The parish will hold a reception for him in December.

“We’ll all cry,” parishioner Jo Miller tells the Catholic Review. “It’s going to be very hard. It’s very hard to thank someone adequately for all they’ve done for you.”

The decision to close Towson Catholic in the face of declining enrollments and rising costs drew protests from students and parents and a lawsuit that was unsuccessful.

Tinder told us in July that if he had to do it over, he would have closed the school earlier, to give students and their families more time to make alternate plans for the fall.

"If there's a regret, it is that we tried too hard to keep the school open and went too long," he said. "I think we would have faced the same difficulty had we done it earlier. But it is my regret that we waited as long as we did in a failed attempt to keep it open."

Read the rest of the story at catholicreview.org.

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The American Civil Liberties Union, known as a watchdog for the separation of church and state, wants to make sure that prisoners have access to religious material.

In a letter sent last week to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Information and Privacy, the ACLU demanded that the federal Bureau of Prisons release records related to alleged attempts by prison officials to purge religious material from prison chapel libraries.

The demand follows what the ACLU says was an inadequate response by prison officials to a Freedom of Information Act request by a California graduate student writing a thesis on the censorship of religious materials in federal prisons.

According to the ACLU Joshua C. Harris, a master’s degree candidate in religion at Claremont Graduate University, is writing a thesis on the 2007 implementation of the Standardized Chapel Library Project, which authorized BOP officials to purge from prison chapel libraries any material that was not on a list of “acceptable” publications that the libraries could maintain. Among those titles banned at the time, the ACLU says, was Maimonides’ “Code of Jewish Law.”

“The refusal of prison officials to provide a full accounting of their rationale for banning religious material is just the latest example of an ongoing effort to secretly and unconstitutionally censor material they consider to be unacceptable,” David Shapiro, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project, said in a statement. “To deny prisoners their constitutional right to access religious materials is bad enough. But to attempt to do so in a way that skirts transparency and prevents the public from knowing what they are doing is entirely unacceptable.”

Harris filed a FOIA request in April asking for “any/all documents that detail the reasoning behind, and implementation of” the Standardized Chapel Library Project, according to the ACLU. The prison bureau gave him four documents.

“The lack of information provided to me by BOP officials has certainly impeded my ability to complete my thesis, but that is only part of my concern,” Harris said in a statement distributed by the ACLU. “My research is motivated by a general concern for the rights of prisoners, particularly their religious freedoms. Incarcerated populations are especially vulnerable to abuses of power, in part, because prisoner issues, such as the censorship of religious materials, are largely invisible to the public. I’m concerned that policies directly impacting federal prisoners are being devised and implemented without any public awareness or debate.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Church and State, Education, Judaism
        

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops opens a four-day general assembly Monday at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel.

On the agenda for the semiannual meeting are several items related to marriage and reproduction. The bishops are to debate and vote on “Love and Life in the Divine Plan, a pastoral letter that the conference describes as presenting “the essential points of Catholic teaching on marriage that are foundational for understanding the nature and purposes of marriage, for living it faithfully, and for preserving and defending it as a necessary and unique social institution.”

The bishops also are also scheduled to hear a report on efforts by the Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage “to promote and protect marriage as the exclusive and permanent union between a man and a woman.” And they are scheduled to debate and vote on “Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology, a document discussing the moral issues surrounding various technologies for treating infertility, including in vitro fertilization, embryo adoption and surrogacy.

Also on the agenda: a proposed revision of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services that “states more definitively the moral obligation to provide medically assisted nutrition and hydration to patients in a ‘persistent vegetative state.’ ”

The proceedings are to be streamed live on the Web at telecare.org.

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As he steps down as moderator of Jewish affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal William Keeler has some advice for his successor: Keep your ears open.

“I saw this most recently on a conference call that we had with Jewish and Catholic leaders on the document “Covenant and Mission,” he tells The Baltimore Jewish Times. The statement by the bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs initially characterized interfaith exchange with Jews as an opportunity to proselytize the Jews.

“We agreed that we would change the two sentences from that which were a concern” Keeler tells the Jewish Times. “Put that into historical context and I just have to say that the relationships are superb and that we are making progress all the time.”

Keeler says he told Pope Benedict XVI that Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York was “the ideal person” to succeed him. He also discusses his appreciation of his faith’s Jewish roots:

I say the Psalms every day and I’m very conscious of their Hebrew authorship. I also think of the Church’s document on the Hebrew Scriptures that was prepared by the present pope and the introduction that he wrote for it is important and something that we live by.

I read every day from this book, “The Liturgy of the Hours,” as all priests are supposed to do. We read Psalms. Not all of them. There are a few that are so angry that they are omitted from the office, which is what we call the book — “The Divine Office of The Office Of Prayer.” It’s a marvelous source. Right now we’re reading from the Second Book of Maccabees.

Read the story at jewishtimes.com.

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Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien will celebrate a Mass at 12:30 p.m. Sunday to mark the 50th anniversary of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.

Built with a bequest from Baltimore merchant Thomas O’Neill and dedicated by Archbishop Francis P. Keough on Nov. 15, 1959, the structure at 5400 N. Charles St. serves as the cathedral church of the archdiocese, as well as a parish for Catholics in North Baltimore.

Some facts, courtesy of the Archdiocese of Baltimore:

The cathedral is 375 feet long, with towers reaching 134 feet and spires rising another 29 feet. It seats a total of 1,900, with 1,400 in pews. It was built from 3.5 million bricks and 70,000 pieces of limestone. It contains 385 sculptures and more than 7,000 organ pipes.

Ground was broken on the 25-acre lot Oct. 10, 1954. Construction was completed by Turner Construction Company of New York and Philadelphia.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Catholicism, Events
        

Well, this much seems to be clear: The Mayan Long Count Calendar does conclude a 5,125-year Great Cycle on or about the Winter Solstice in 2012. Whether that means the end is nigh is another question.

With the release of the film 2012, the doomsday chatter that has long festered on the Internet and late-night talk radio has come out into the open. While details vary, the general gist is that the ancient Maya predicted some sort of cataclysm on 12/21/12, with speculation now coalescing around the appearance of a rogue planet that could disrupt the earth's rotation, orbit and/or magnetic poles.

Scientists say that a planet approaching Earth could, indeed, wreak havoc. But if one were on its way, we'd have seen it by now.

The best comment I heard while reporting a story on the phenomenon for Friday's newspaper came from Ben Radford, managing editor of the Skeptical Inquirer: "I've got a calendar on my wall that ends on Dec. 31. I'm not particularly worried that there isn't going to be another one after it."

The comparison is apt, according to an anthropologist who studies the ancient peoples of Mesoamerica.

"In a lot of ways, it wasn't very different than our New Year's," University of New Hampshire anthropologist Eleanor Harrison-Buck told me. "It would have been seen as a very powerful time. But rather than simply the end of the world, the Maya would have viewed the end of this great cycle as a really important and powerful time of reordering and renewal."

Fascination with the end of the world has a dark side. NASA scientist David Morrison, host of the Web site Ask an Astrobiologist, told the Los Angeles Times last month that he had heard from two teenagers so concerned about 2012 that they were "thinking of ending their lives."

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

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A mosque in Potomac is one of four targeted by federal prosecutors Thursday in what could prove to be one of the largest counterterrorism seizures in U.S. history, the Associated Press is reporting.

Prosecutors took steps Thursday to seize the four mosques and a Fifth Avenue skyscraper owned by the nonprofit Alavi Foundation, long suspected of being secretly controlled by the Iranian government.

In all, prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of more than $500 million in assets, including bank accounts, Islamic centers consisting of schools and mosques in New York City, Maryland, California and Houston, more than 100 acres in Virginia, and a 36-story glass office tower in New York.

John D. Winter, the Alavi Foundation's lawyer, told the AP that it intends to litigate the case and prevail. He said the foundation has been cooperating with the government's investigation for the better part of a year.

A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations expressed concern. Spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said the move comes at a particularly bad time, as American Muslims are fearful of a backlash resulting from the recent shooting spree at Fort Hood in Texas.

“Whatever the details of the government’s case against the owners of the mosques, as a civil rights organization we are concerned that the seizure of American houses of worship could have a chilling effect on the religious freedom of citizens of all faiths and may send a negative message to Muslims worldwide,” he said.

The mosques and the skyscraper will remain open while the forfeiture case works its way through court in what could be a long process, the AP reports. What will happen to them if the government ultimately prevails is unclear. But the government typically sells properties it has seized through forfeiture, and the proceeds are sometimes distributed to crime victims.

"No action has been taken against any tenants or occupants of those properties," U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Yusill Scribner said. "The tenants and occupants remain free to use the properties as they have before today's filing. There are no allegations of any wrongdoing on the part of any of these tenants or occupants."

Prosecutors said the Alavi Foundation managed the office tower on behalf of the Iranian government and, working with a front company known as Assa Corp., illegally funneled millions in rental income to Iran's state-owned Bank Melli. Bank Melli has been accused by a U.S. Treasury official of providing support for Iran's nuclear program, and it is illegal in the United States to do business with the bank.

The U.S. has long suspected the foundation was an arm of the Iranian government; a 97-page complaint details involvement in foundation business by several top Iranian officials, including the deputy prime minister and ambassadors to the United Nations.

"For two decades, the Alavi Foundation's affairs have been directed by various Iranian officials, including Iranian ambassadors to the United Nations, in violation of a series of American laws," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.

Read the rest of the story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: International, Islam
        

Are we alone in the universe? The Vatican would like to know.

Catholic News Service has a report from a meeting of 30 scientists convened by the Vatican Observatory and the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences to consider the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

The Rev. José Funes, the Jesuit priest who heads the Vatican Observatory, tells CNS that discoveries of life in inhospitable conditions on Earth, such as rock-eating microbes found deep beneath the ocean floor, suggest that life may also exist on other worlds.

Funes said it is "very important that the church is involved in this type of research." According to CNS, he quoted Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, president of the commission governing Vatican City, as telling participants that "truth from research cannot make us afraid; what is to be feared is error.”

Asked whether God would have to be incarnated elsewhere if there were intelligent life on another planet, Funes said God's incarnation in Jesus Christ was a "unique event not only in human history but in the history of the universe and the cosmos.”

The existence of evil and original sin on Earth meant God, the good shepherd, had to leave behind his entire flock to go get his one lost sheep, he said.

Read the rest of the story at catholicnews.com.

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A federal judge has ruled that South Carolina can't issue license plates showing the image of a cross in front of a stained glass window along with the phrase "I Believe,” the Associated Press is reporting.

U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie ruled Tuesday that the license violated the First Amendment ban on establishment of religion by government.

Within hours, a private Christian group said the ruling doesn't stand in the way of its "Plan B" to get a similar plate issued using a state law that permits private groups to issue tags they design, according to the AP.

The fight over the plates started shortly after Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer helped push the legislation through in 2008, the AP reports. Groups including Americans United for Separation of Church and State and American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee challenged the state's ability to put a religious message on a state license tag.

Read the rest of the story.

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Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a California Democrat dismayed by the House vote over the weekend to prohibit taxpayer subsidies for insurance policies that cover abortion in the healthcare overhaul, is saying maybe the IRS should investigate the tax-exempt status of the Catholic Church following its lobbying effort for the restriction.

“I expect political hardball on any legislation as important as the health care bill,” Woolsey writes in Politico. “I just didn’t expect it from the United States Council [sic] of Catholic Bishops … Who elected them to Congress?”

Abortion rights supporters say the restriction will effectively deny abortion for the low- and moderate-income women whom the healthcare overhaul is intended to insure. The U.S. Conference (not Council) of Catholic Bishops, which supports universal health insurance coverage but opposes abortion, lobbied hard for the restriction as the healthcare bill neared a vote on Saturday.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien told us on Monday that it was appropriate for Catholics to make their beliefs known during the healthcare debate.

"When it comes to abortion and research on human life, we can't compromise on those things," he said. "Once we get the foundation established that human life has to be respected, then let the debate go on as to what the health bill will contain."

But Woolsey says the bishops’ effort went beyond advocacy.

“They seemed to dictate the finer points of the amendment, and managed to bully members of Congress to vote for added restrictions on a perfectly legal surgical procedure. And this political effort was subsidized by taxpayers, since the Council enjoys tax-exempt status.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (53)
        

Ten area Jewish organizations have received $250,000 in federal homeland security grants, the Baltimore Jewish Council announced.

The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, of which the Baltimore Jewish Council is an agency, will receive $45,000. Talmudical Academy of Baltimore in Pikesville will receive $15,000 and the Jewish Federation of Howard County will receive $2,999.

The rest of the money is to be divided among seven area synagogues: Avodas Yisroel Machzikei Torah, Beit Yaakov Congregation, Har Sinai Congregation, Ohr Hamizrach Congregation, Shaarei Tfiloh Congregation, Shearith Israel Congregation and Bnos Yisroel of Baltimore.

"Keeping our community safe is a critical part of the work done by the Baltimore Jewish Council," Jimmy Berg, chairman of the Associated board, said in a statement. " Maryland was the first state in the nation to provide federal funds to enhance security at Jewish institutions. The Baltimore Jewish Council continues to advise and lobby state and federal officials about the security concerns of our community's synagogues, schools and other organizations."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The historic House vote over the weekend to block the use of federal funds for abortion in the healthcare overhaul is only the beginning of a battle that is reshaping the reform debate.

While at least when Senate Democrat is talking about adding the restriction to that body's version of the legislation, dozens of House Democrats now say they will vote against any bill that contains it.

We have a story in Tuesday's newspaper about how Marylanders on both sides of the abortion divide are readying for the fight.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Muslim organizations have condemned the shooting attack at Fort Hood last week by Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan, and some Muslims have worried that it could fuel negatives perceptions of Islam.

Add the Army chief of staff to those who are concerned.

“We have to be careful,” Gen. George Casey said Sunday on CNN. “Because we can't jump to conclusions now based on little snippets of information that come out. And frankly, I am worried – not worried, but I'm concerned that this increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And I've asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that. It would be a shame, as great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate armed services committee, also counseled restraint.

“At the end of the day, maybe this is just about him,” the South Carolina Republican, a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, said Sunday on CBS. “It's certainly not about his religion, Islam. It's not about the Army; it's not about the war. At the end of the day, I think it's going to be about him.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

Virtually every American Muslim or Arab that I asked on Friday about the shootings at Fort Hood said his or her first concern was for the victims and the survivors. Some said they were also concerned that the incident would feed negative perceptions of their community.

"I feel nervous when I see a Muslim name or an Arab name," Imam Awni Qudah, the spiritual leader of the Islamic Society of Annapolis said after Friday at the Makkah Learning Center in Gambrills. Qudah said he meets and speaks regularly with his Jewish and Christian counterparts

"What worries me is our neighbors, our reputation," he said. "Whenever something happens, everybody looks at us, and we do not want that barrier."

But others expressed confidence that Americans are unlikely to blame the alleged actions of shooting suspect Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan on his Palestinian roots or his Muslim faith.

"Maybe a few years ago, backlash would have been higher on my list, but the U.S. has really kind of matured on this point," Baltimore attorney and author Alia Malek said. "If there were ever a reason to brace ourselves for a really tremendous backlash, it was after 9/11. And, you know, it wasn't our greatest moment as Americans, but we've come through that with some more curiosity, more openness and more willingness to look at the different communities that make up the United States."

Farhat Noor, a software engineer in Baltimore, also identifies the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as a turning point.

"I think people have kind of understood that, yes, there are some people within the Muslim community that have done things like this, but the people I've interacted with have been able to differentiate that, yes, this happened, but it's not linked to the religion or it's not something that is preached," Noor said. "I was just talking about it with co-workers, and I don't see them looking at me any differently or thinking about me any differently."

Qudah was heartened Friday but what he said was an outpouring of support from his interfaith friends.

"I received many calls from the churches around us," he said."I was so happy hearing, 'Imam, we are behind you.' One of them said, 'I was so anxious last night thinking about you, thinking about your community. I hope nobody will do any bad thing.' "

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

National Muslim organizations are attempting to distance themselves from Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan, the officer accused in the shootings Thursday at Fort Hood, Texas, in which 13 were killed and dozens wounded.

They are also urging Muslims to protect themselves from a backlash, and asking law enforcement authorities to step up security outside mosques, community centers and schools.

Soldiers who witnessed the shootings say Hassan, identified in media reports as the Muslim son of Palestinian immigrants, shouted “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire, base commander Lt. Gen. Robert Cone said Friday. The phrase is Arabic for “God is great.”

Hassan, an Army psychiatrist, reportedly was critical of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and had been harassed by fellow soldiers for being a Muslim, according to media reports.

Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, condemned what he called a “cowardly attack.”

“Right now, we call on all Americans to assist those who are responding to this atrocity,” Awad told reporters in Washington late Thursday. “We must ensure that the wounded are treated and the families of those who were murdered have an opportunity to mourn.

“No political or religious ideology could ever justify or excuse such wanton and indiscriminate violence. The attack was particularly heinous in that it targeted our nation’s all-volunteer army that includes thousands of Muslims in all services. We again offer our thoughts and prayers for the victims and sincere condolences for the families of those killed or injured.”

Mary Rose Oakar, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, issued a similar statement.

"This attack is absolutely deplorable,” she said. “ADC has been consistent and on record in condemning any attacks aimed at innocents, no matter who the victims or the perpetrators may be. Such violence is morally reprehensible and has nothing to do with any religion, race, ethnicity, or national origin. ADC urges the FBI and law enforcement agencies to make every effort to see that justice is served."

"ADC also calls upon law enforcement agencies to provide immediate protection for all Mosques, community centers, schools, and any locations that may be identified or misidentified with being Arab, Muslim, South Asian or Sikh as a clear backlash has already started. The actions of a few should not invite a backlash on innocent members of any community and we urge law enforcement and others to keep that in mind.”

Awad, of CAIR, urged calm.

“The motive of the attacker is not yet known. We urge all Americans to remain calm in reaction to this tragic event and to demonstrate once again what is best about America ¬- our nation’s ability to remain unified even in times of crisis. We urge national political and religious leaders and media professionals to set a tone of calm and unity.

“Unfortunately, based on past experience, we also urge American Muslims, and those who may be perceived to be Muslim, to take appropriate precautions to protect themselves, their families and their religious institutions from possible backlash.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
        

Attorney, author and professor David Neipert, a senior Fulbright scholar in law, is a former associate professor of international business at Belmont Abbey College.

It has been nearly two years since we asked EEOC to review Belmont Abbey College's policy on contraception and EEOC still has not issued a ruling on the matter. I considered responding to Rabbi Menken's last post but I would prefer to just wait and see how the matter resolves with EEOC.

I received an email critical of the Catholic church from a former student and have been reflecting on the overall picture and my decision to leave Belmont Abbey. I no longer want to be a part of that College but harbor no ill will towards the faith. There are enlightened Catholics who sponsored the voyages that discovered the world, made great breakthroughs in science (Gregor Mendel for example), and operate wonderful charities. For most of its history BAC was striving to be in that category and we were very proud to be part of it.

There is also an intolerant minority of Catholics who concentrate on rigid dogma rather than Christian behavior and smear any critic of the church. BAC seemed to be moving in that direction and so I quit.

Yet I cannot generalize. I once taught at the National University in Macedonia and lived only a few blocks from where Mother Teresa was born. Studying her life I have been inspired. Her example exists everywhere in the world where Catholics are. You can find the very best of Catholicism right across the highway from Belmont Abbey College. There the Catholic Sisters of Mercy have a hospital where they work with the horribly deformed children that almost nobody wants. They don't noisily claim to be "authentic" or conduct a nationwide publicity campaign; they just do god's work as best they can quietly every day. They have contraceptives in the health plan for their employees who want them and don't try to force their practices on anyone. They don't try to raise money by claiming to be defending religious freedom though they surely could use some funding. I suppose by Belmont Abbey College's definition of what is a proper Catholic the sisters are all bound straight for Hell because they pay for birth control pills, but I doubt that.

Whatever happens with the Belmont Abbey case, not much will change. The church's teachings on birth control make little sense to most people and the majority of Catholics will continue to ignore them. Most Catholic institutions will continue to follow the law and include contraceptives in their health plans. And the Sisters of Mercy, more than those in charge of Belmont Abbey College, will continue to earn the loving respect of those who know of their work.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

We had a story in the newspaper Thursday about a project to digitze the Islamic manuscript collection at the Walters Art Museum and upload it to the World Wide Web, where documents dating back to the ninth century may be seen free of charge by anyone with an Internet connection.

Art historians at the Smithsonian and the British Museum praised the project, which they say puts the Walters at the forefront of a movement to increase online access to such holdings. they are hoping for an explosion in scholarship, as professionals, amateurs and students pore over the richly illuminated Qurans and lavishly illustrated volumes of poetry and history.

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The City Council bill that would require pro-life pregnancy counseling centers in Baltimore to post signs indicating that they don’t provide abortions or birth control passed a first hurdle this week, clearing the judiciary and legislative investigations committee on Monday by a 3-1 vote.

It now goes to the full council for a preliminary vote next week, with a final vote to follow.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien has described the proposal as an unconstitutional “harassment” that infringes on the centers’ free speech. Carol Clews, executive director of the Center for Pregnancy Concerns, says it “impugns our integrity.”

Both say the centers in question do not hide their opposition to abortion. Clews has asked whether abortion providers will be required to post signs saying that they don’t refer pregnant women to adoption services or provide assistance to mothers and children after the birth – services offered by her organization, which operates two clinics in the city and one in the county.

The judiciary and legislative investigations committee amended the bill, which was introduced by council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake at the behest of Planned Parenthood, which hopes to make Baltimore the first city in the country with such a law. The committee voted to reduce the fine for not posting a sign from $500 per day to $150, and to require the city health commissioner to notify a center of a complaint and give the center 10 days to comply before facing penalties.

O’Brien remains unsatisfied. In his column in the archdiocesan newspaper The Catholic Review, he urges readers to contact city council members.

"Instead of focusing on the poverty, violence and homelessness that has had a death grip on Baltimore and its citizens for years," he writes, "the City Council has made it a priority to force all four of its pregnancy centers – centers the City’s own Social Services departments refer women to – to post signs that state the services they do not provide, namely abortion and contraception. As introduced, the bill imposes a criminal fine of $500/day for failing to post such a sign. Seemingly benign on its face, the bill unnecessarily targets only pro-life pregnancy resource centers and promises to be a model and jumping-off point for a national effort to attack pregnancy resource centers. What other private, charitable organizations or even public businesses are required to post services that they do not provide? It mirrors similar legislation introduced at the state level in 2008, which failed to pass. In both cases the proposed laws target pregnancy centers because of their pro-life mission and do not require abortion clinics to make similar disclosures.

"What do these pregnancy resource centers do that could possibly explain such unwarranted scrutiny by our City Council? Among the free help they offer are pregnancy tests, sonograms, maternity and baby clothes, confidential counseling and parenting classes. Assisting these centers in their good work are the people of the Gabriel Network, which supplements the invaluable life-affirming resources provided by pregnancy resource centers by connecting women in need with “angel friends.” These volunteers stay with women in crisis throughout their pregnancies and beyond, helping them find housing, taking them to prenatal appointments, assisting them in obtaining scholarships to finish school and helping them find the resources they need for themselves and their children. In fact, I have heard stories of “angel friends” still in contact and friendship with their former clients 10 years later. These pregnancy resource centers and angel friends do the work of the Good Samaritan, the work necessary to building a culture of life, and the work required of us to accompany our commitment as a pro-life Church."

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The Baltimore Jewish Times this week has a couple of stories interesting both in and of themselves and in juxtaposition.

The first reports that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf two Baltimore-area brothers alleging anti-Semitism in the workplace. Scott and Joey Jacobson say they were physically and verbally harassed because of their religion. According to The Jewish Times, they were subjected to such slurs as “dirty Jew,” “stupid Jew,” “f—-ing Jew” and “dumb Jew.”

In addition, The Jewish Times reports, Scott Jacobson said a red swastika was taped to his vehicle, water was poured on him, and he was forced into a dumpster and tied to a fence. He was also shot at with a BB gun. The Jacobsons said their supervisors failed to correct the “hostile” workplace climate.

The lawsuit names Conn-X LLC, a Florida cable corporation with an office in Edgewood, and the Houston-based Administaff Inc. as defendants.

The second story announces that two area men, one of them a former Baltimore County police supervisor, have formed a security firm that specializes in safeguarding synagogues and Jewish gatherings.

Defender One founders Jon Krieger and Scott Wendell, both members of Beth El Congregation, plan to use active and retired police officers from area departments for the security details.

The Jewish Times reports that the firm has worked with Beth El Congregation and talked about security with the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore; it also is looking to provide security at Jewish life cycle events such as b’nai mitzvah and weddings.

“We are competing with several companies, but we haven’t run into competition where we are going—to the shuls and the events that go on at the shuls,” Krieger tells The Jewish Times.

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Four Amish leaders have been charged with failing to report suspected child abuse after they chose to shun an accused child molester in their community rather than turn him in to authorities.

Each of the four bishops in rural Webster County, Mo., has been charged with a misdemeanor charge of failure to report child abuse as a mandatory reporter, according to the Associated Press. Under Missouri law, the AP reports, people with “responsibility for the care of children” – including doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers and ministers – are required to report suspected abuse.

Charged were bishops Emmanuel M.S. Eicher, 44, Peter M. Eicher, 59, Jacob P. Schwartz, 79, and Christian J.F. Schwartz, 41.

Authorities say the four men knew that a member of their community, Johnny A. Schwartz, 36, had abused two underage children from June 2007 through June 2008. Schwartz was charged in mid-October with six counts involving sexual abuse of children.

Authorities would not say how Schwartz and the bishops with the same surname are related, the AP reports. They also would not release the ages of the children or their relationship to Johnny Schwartz.

Sheriff Roye H. Cole said authorities found out about the alleged abuse from someone who works among the them, the AP reports. That individual, who has not been identified, had heard about Schwartz being shunned by the community and asked why.

Shunning is a form of punishment among the Amish in which a member of the group who fails to follow communal rules is ostracized.

An attorney for the bishops questioned whether they could be considered mandatory reporters. Attorney Will Worsham told the AP that the Amish do not separate government and religion, and that a bishop is akin to a mayor or city councilman.

"I'm not convinced `bishop' necessarily implies any type of religious authority in their community. And even if it did, I'm not sure they would qualify as `clergy.' It doesn't appear anywhere in the law."

Read the rest of the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Amish, Church and State
        

The New York Times has an interesting story this week about the apparently growing belief in creationism across the Muslim world. Kenneth Chang writes:

For many Muslims, even evolution and the notion that life flourished without the intervening hand of Allah is largely compatible with their religion. What many find unacceptable is human evolution, the idea that humans evolved from primitive primates. The Koran states that Allah created Adam, the first man, separately out of clay.

Pervez A. Hoodbhoy, a prominent atomic physicist at Quaid-e-Azam University in Pakistan, said that when he gave lectures covering the sweep of cosmological history from the Big Bang to the evolution of life on Earth, the audience listened without objection to most of it. “Everything is O.K. until the apes stand up,” Dr. Hoodbhoy said.

Mentioning human evolution led to near riots, and he had to be escorted out. “That’s the one thing that will never be possible to bridge,” he said. “Your lineage is what determines your worth.”

Participants in a conference last month at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., said the rejection of evolution appears to be growing.

Chang quotes Truman State Univesity physicist Taner Edis as saying that he never encountered creationist undertones when he was growing up in Turkey in the 1970s: “I first noticed creationism when I came to America for graduate school,” he said.

But visiting a bookstore in Turkey some years later, Chang writes, Edis was surprised to find books about creationism filed in the science section.

The creationism in question is not of the young earth variety common among Christian fundamentalists, who take the six-day building project described in Genesis literally, and reckon the age of the universe at no more than 10,000 years. While the Quran also says the universe was created in six days, Chang writes, it also says that "day" is metaphorical: “a thousand years of your reckoning.”

Read the rest of the story at nytimes.com.

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We have been thinking of reading “Life After Death: The Evidence,” the new book by conservative pundit-turned-Christian apologist Dinesh D’Souza, which hit our desk last week. Now we come across Jerry Adler’s heartbreaking essay in the current issue of Newsweek, which may be summed up as: Don’t bother.

Adler opens with a scene from last spring, when he opened the front door of his Brooklyn home to find an Eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly on the steps. It was three months after the death of his son.

The butterfly, with its otherworldly beauty and silence, is, of course, a common metaphor for the soul. Its emergence from entombment as a chrysalis may have inspired ideas about human resurrection. In the newsletter of the Compassionate Friends, a support group for bereaved parents, the sudden appearance of butterflies (and birds, cloud formations, and particular songs on the radio) is sometimes cited as evidence of communication from beyond the grave. So let me be clear about where I stand: not only do I not believe it, but I can't understand why anyone would take comfort from it. I would hate to think of Max, with his fierce intelligence and tenacity, reduced to sending mute signals by way of insects.

Adler groups D’Souza’s book with mathematician David Berlinski's "The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions," physicist Frank J. Tripler's "The Physics of Christianity," and National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins' "The Language of God" as constituting an attempt by believeers to confront the new atherism of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens et al "on its own intellectual turf, without benefit of scripture or revelation."

In the case of D'Souza, at least, Adler is skeptical of the result.

The "evidence," of necessity, is indirect: D'Souza doesn't claim to have communicated with anyone who has died, and he doesn't expect to. Instead, he looks to the human heart, and finds therein a universal moral code underlying acts of self-sacrifice and charity that appear to run counter to the Darwinian imperative to outcompete thy neighbor. This is a time-honored argument for the existence of a God who created human beings in his image and imbued them with a moral sense, as well as the free will to follow, or ignore, it. Berlinski uses the argument in his book, and Collins credits it with turning him from atheism to evangelical Christianity. (D'Souza acknowledges that the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has offered an evolutionary explanation for human goodness, but he doesn't buy it.) In a Jesuitical display that does credit to his reputation as "an Indian William F. Buckley Jr.," D'Souza turns to his advantage one of the atheists' favorite arguments, God's apparent tolerance for human suffering. Precisely because evil so often goes unpunished in this world, he asserts, the moral code must reflect another reality, in which souls are judged, punished, or rewarded after death. "The postulate of an afterlife enables us to make sense of this life," he writes. It worked for Dante, didn't it?

And if that's not enough to convince you, D'Souza provides a checklist of benefits from believing in life after death: it keeps us honest, gives our lives "a sense of hope and purpose"—and "surveys show" that believers have better sex. It provides "a mechanism to teach our children right from wrong"—a mechanism that those who have been subjected to it tend to describe as a neurotic lifelong fear of going to Hell. And if your smart-alecky kid, full of all that Galileo stuff they get in school nowadays, should ask just where this Judgment business takes place, D'Souza provides you with a response. It happens in the multiverse, the infinitely multiplying complex of worlds predicted by some versions of quantum theory. In the multiverse, physical laws can take on different values, and matter itself may have a different form, so "there is nothing in physics to contradict the idea that we can live beyond death in other realms with bodies that are unlike the bodies we now possess."

The problem, Adler says, is that the multiverse “is supported by no more empirical evidence that the soul itself.” He is more interested in the Awareness During Resuscitation (AWARE) study of “near-death experiences,” which involves 600 subjects at 20 hospitals led by Dr. Sam Parnia of Weill Cornell Medical Center. Randomly generated images are to be projected in the hospital rooms of critically ill patients where they may be seen only from above, as by a patient having an out-of-body experience.

“If patients who survive NDEs can identify these images subsequently — well, not to overdramatize, but several centuries of materialism in the natural sciences will have to be rewritten,” Adler writes. He concludes:

I await Parnia's paper eagerly, although I can't imagine it will help fill the hole in my life left by the death of my son. Is there comfort in the idea that Max lives on as a disembodied consciousness in a parallel universe? I want him here with me now, and I would gladly trade my prospects for Eternity for the chance to hug him one more time. C. S. Lewis himself dismissed the capacity of faith to overcome bereavement. "Don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion," he wrote in A Grief Observed, "or I shall suspect that you don't understand."

Read the essay at newsweek.com.

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Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew had issued his greeting and blessed the few hundred who had waited in the cold outside Ss. Constantine and Helen Orthodox Church in Annapolis – in Greek. He was stepping down from the platform when an aide said something in his ear. Bartholomew, the worldwide leader of Orthodox Christianity, returned to the microphone.

“I was told that I have to speak also in English,” he said. Laughter and cheers from a grateful crowd.

We had a story in Tuesday’s newspaper about the visit of Bartholomew, who as archbishop of Constantinople is first among equals among the 14 patriarchs of Orthodox Christianity. He celebrated the 18th anniversary of his enthronement with a doxology and a dinner at the Annapolis church.

It was his first visit to Maryland since 1997, when he made an appearance at the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Baltimore, and his first ever to Annapolis. In attendance were Archbishop Demetrios of America, the leader of the Greek Orthodox Church in the United States; Metropolitan Evangelos, who heads the Metropolis of New Jersey, which includes Maryland; U.S. Rep. John Sarbanes, the Greek-American Democrat from Baltimore County; and Cardinal William Keeler, the former Roman Catholic archbishop of Baltimore.

During his homily, Bartholomew said it was fitting to be celebrating his anniversary at Ss. Constantinople and Helen and in Maryland. A transcript follows, after the jump.

Your Eminences Archbishop Demetrios of America and Metropolitan Evangelos of New Jersey, Your Eminences and Graces, Reverend Clergy of the Holy Archdiocese of America, Beloved Children in the Lord,

This evening we are brought together by the Holy Spirit in great joy and supreme love, as we celebrate with the community of Saints Constantine and Helen Church here in Annapolis, along with many faithful of the God-saved Metropolis of New Jersey. It is with profound humility and paternal love that we share with you this day as the observance of the eighteenth anniversary of our enthronement as the successor of the First-Called Apostle Saint Andrew as Archbishop of Constantinople and New Rome, and Ecumenical Patriarch.

There could be no more fitting venue for such an observance than here, in a temple dedicated to those Equals of the Apostles Saints Constantine and Helen; and here, in a land that lies beyond the boundaries of their ken. For it was the vision of these holy rulers to see the true faith of our Lord Jesus Christ spread to every corner of the Oikoumene, the inhabited world, and from there to parts uncharted or as yet unknown. This church, this community, and this holy synaxis this evening, is the fulfillment of their most fervent prayers and aspirations.

Moreover, your reception of our paternal visitation in all filial devotion and love is a proof beyond words of the truth of our title as “Ecumenical Patriarch.” For you have received us, not merely as a dignitary or ecclesiastical “celebrity,” but in truth as a spiritual father and pastor. We remember the words of Saint Paul (1 Cor. 4:15) — “For though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you have not many fathers.” So in truth we are also, we the heirs of the throne of Saint Andrew, unto you, as a father among our beloved children.

And like Saint Paul we confess: “Besides everything else, we face daily the care of all the churches,” not only here in North and South America, but across the globe. For this reason the ancient and eternal Church in her wisdom long ago bestowed upon the throne of Saint Andrew the title of worldwide significance, “Ecumenical Patriarchate.”

It is, furthermore, all the more fitting that our patriarchal anniversary remembrance should be in this state of Maryland, founded as it was on the principle of religious liberty, founded as a colony of free men seeking the free exercise of their faith in the Triune God. Our patriarchal mission these eighteen years has been likewise to champion the cause of human rights for all people, especially in matters of faith and conscience.

With this evening’s Vespers we begin the commemoration of Saint Acepsimas of Persia, a bishop and martyr of the fourth century. Saint Acepsimas was martyred along with Joseph the presbyter and Aeithalas the deacon. These ordained servants of Christ suffered many hideous tortures for their refusal to join the Persian king in his mindless worship of the sun. The bones of their bodies were cruelly and systematically broken, whereafter they were shut up in a prison cell for three years to languish in pain and sickness, in hunger and thirst, until at last they sealed their testimony for Christ with their own blood.

The persecutors taunted the saints with the question that is found in the mouth of every oppressor: “Can you not see what misfortunes your faith has brought upon you?” The victim is blamed for his sufferings! So it was in the minds of the chief priests and scribes who sought the crucifixion of Christ. So it was in the minds of those who persecuted the prophets and the apostles. So it is always for minds blinded by the darkness of this world, for whom the measure of a belief system is in its powers of coercion over one’s fellow man.

So it was then, and so it is still today. And thus our response even now must be the response of the holy martyrs, and before them of the holy Apostles, and before them of Christ Himself: we bless those who curse us, we pray for those who mistreat us, we love those who hate us and abuse us.

In the fact of cruelty, we must extend compassion.

In the face of irrationality, we must display sober-mindedness.

In the face of impiety and irreverence, we must demonstrate the fear of the Lord in every word and action before the eyes of men.

This is the way of Christ, the way of salvation and everlasting life.

As your spiritual father and pastor, we commend to you the example of your forefathers in the Orthodox Christian Faith. May their memory be eternal! Through patience in good works, strive to radiate the light of true wisdom and peace to all those around you, even as we hold forth the light of Faith in the ancient home of our Mother Church of Constantinople. “Be followers of us, even as we also are of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1).

Even as the Holy Spirit gathered us together this evening, may He bring us together again in love in days to come, we pray. To you here this evening and to all the faithful of the Archdiocese of America who have remained dear to our heart these past eighteen years, may the Lord grant many, many years of life and holiness in His service. And may the God of peace sanctify you wholly, and preserve you blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

A devastating newspaper series based on the allegations of former high-ranking church officials. A fraud conviction and prison sentences in Europe. The resignation of perhaps the church’s most prestigious celebrity, who writes a letter confirming practices that the church has denied.

“The Church of Scientology,” Associated Press religion reporter Eric Gorski writes, “is going through a difficult season.”

Gorski has produced a useful summary of the events and developments that have rocked the embattled church founded by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.

Church spokesman Tommy Davis tells Gorski that Scientology is flourishing, with assets and property holdings doubling over the past five years, membership growing in the United States and “absolutely in the millions” worldwide.

"From our perspective, things are going pretty great," Davis says. "In fact, that's downplaying it. Actually, what's happening with the church right now is frankly spectacular. To the degree there are these various things happening, it really is a lot of noise."

But Gorski finds a different picture in the American Religious Identification Survey, which showed that the estimated number of Americans identifying Scientologists rose from 45,000 in 1990 to 55,000 in 2001, then plummeted to 25,000 in 2008, according to the American Religion Identification Survey.

Perhaps the biggest problem facing the church is the allegations raised by four former high-ranking church officials, who told the St. Petersburg Times that they witnessed church leader David Miscavige beating church staff members.

Davis tells Gorski the allegations are "absolutely, unquestionably false" and "sickening and outrageous."

But they have been embraced by a growing community of Scientology critics, including many former members.

"When you have dozens of people speaking out, it's no longer too credible to say they're all malcontents and criminals," Jeff Hawkins, a former Scientology marketing guru who defected in 2005, tells Gorski. The church “is either going to reform or collapse, and I think it's going to be the latter because they're incapable of reform or admitting any wrongdoing."

Read the rest of the Associated Press story.

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The last time our friend Christopher J. Doucot spoke at an Episcopal church was in 2004. He had just returned from Iraq, and gave what he describes as a “somewhat forceful sermon” critical of the U.S.-led invasion there.

A graduate of Yale Divinity School, a founding member of the Hartford Catholic Worker, and an instructor in sociology at Central Connecticut State University, Chris was told to keep it upbeat on Sunday -- All Saints' Day -- when he is scheduled to speak at St. James Episcopal Church in West Hartford, Conn.

When I was a kid, my understanding of the saints was that they were something like the cartoon superheroes I watched on Saturday mornings. They could fly, endure great suffering, go years without eating and heal people by praying over them. They were not real people.

As I got older, I began to see various athletes from Boston's professional sports teams as saintly – if not saints in the making. Carl Yaztremski of the Red Sox was the patron of the lost cause who never gave up. Terry O'Reilly of the Boston Bruins was the defender of the meek. He spent hours in the penalty box for busting the noses of any player from the opposing team who got in Wayne Cashman's way. Unfortunately, O'Reilly didn't confine his bellicosity to the ice. Once, in 1979, he climbed into the stands of Madison Square Garden to beat a New York Ragners fan with his own shoe.

One of my favorite childhood sports saints had been a poor kid from Indiana who dropped out of college and spent a year as a garbage man. He remembered his experience picking up trash as time when he "had the chance to make my community look better." St. Larry, the bird who could not fly or even jump high, was one of the greatest basketball players of our time. Despite his inability to run faster or jump higher than the opposition, Bird led the Celtics to multiple championships because he made everyone around him better.

Perhaps this is the definitive quality of a saint: saints are just everyday people who make everyone around them better. This notion stands in stark contrast with our popular imagination of saints as superhuman and heroic figures. For example, the patrons of my community, the Hartford Catholic Worker, are St. Martin De Porres and St. Brigid of Kildare. Though Martin healed the sick, cared for the poor, and helped orphan, his claim to sainthood revolves around his ability to bilocate. As for Brigid, a bishop in the Catholic Church, her sanctity was revealed by her love of the poor – evidenced by her giving away her father's riches to the beggars who came to her door. She is best known, though, for her ability to turn water into beer, and her fervent prayer for there to be a lake of beer waiting for the poor in heaven.

The truth is we can't be in two places at once, and we'll never turn water into beer no matter how long we pray over it – I've tried. We're mortals. We're ordinary, everyday human beings lacking any manner of super power. We can't leap tall buildings or stop moving trains, but neither could the saints. Saints are not superheroes and they not even perfect. Like the rest of us, our saints have feet – or, in the case of Terry O'Reilly – skates of clay.

Saints are real people who struggle with the same faults and foibles the rest of us encounter in our daily struggle to be good people. It is the fiction of perfection with which we remember our saints that led Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, to reject the moniker of saint. She said she didn't want to be dismissed that easily. By imagining our saints to be demi-gods and ignoring their sins we conveniently excuse ourselves from the example they set for us mere mortals. We can't bilocate but we can love our neighbor as ourselves. We can't turn water into beer but we can provide clean water for the thirsty.

The saints didn't make everyone around them better because they were perfect. They made everyone around them better because they loved not only in thought but in deed as well. This idea that sainthood means perfection is a notion akin to Docetism, one of the seminal heresies of Christianity. Docetists believe that Jesus was not really fully human. If Jesus was not fully human and, likewise, if saints are more than human, how can we ordinary, sinful and imperfect humans possibly imitate Jesus or practice the sanctity of the saints?

Let's not dismiss Jesus and the saints so easily.

Saints aren't perfect people; but they are extraordinary people. That is, they are extra ordinary.

We, too, have the capacity to be extra-ordinary. We are born with the seeds of sainthood lovingly planted in our souls by a merciful God who confidently awaits the sprouting and growth of new saints; much like an experienced farmer knows his crops will yield a harvest in the right season with the right care. We have the stuff – some might call it the Holy Spirit – within us already for the saint we are meant to be to thrive and bear the fruit of justice. Our created existence is holy; our true self is sanctified. We are all saints in the process of becoming, so long as we recognize that the spirit dwelling in us also dwells in all others. The key to sainthood, I think, is merely a question of vision. Do we see the sanctity of others? Are we willing to love not just the people we adore but also those we abhor?

Basketball analysts agree that what made Larry Bird one of the greatest basketball players of all times was his vision. Bird saw the whole court. He knew where the other players were, where they had come from and where they were going. He could do what others thought impossible because he saw what was possible. And so it is with saints; they do what seems impossible because they see what is possible.

Saints have the extra-ordinary vision to see the whole court. They see in the here and now the new heaven and new earth that remains obscured to most of us. This extraordinary vision of the saints comes with trusting Jesus. When Jesus gently scolds Martha in today's gospel: "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" we are all being told to trust him. The saints see what is seemingly hidden from us because they believe in Jesus not only as Christ ; they also believe him when he said things like: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you," and "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth.” The saints believe Jesus when he said: "Sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven", and "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these you did it to me".

By believing him and trusting him, saints are ready to die to this world and its values to live in the new earth where: 'Death, mourning, crying and pain will be no more." With their extraordinary vision, the saints see our broken present and imagine a just future is within our reach, a just future which, in fact, is made present with each act of love.

Saintly sight results not from the gift of abundant piety or super-natural powers, but from the perspective gained by standing with the poor. Perspective is all about where we stand. Do the guard and the inmate see the same sun rise? In his sermon on the plain recorded in Luke, Jesus says: "Blessed are those who are poor, the Kingdom of God is theirs:" If the Kingdom is theirs, I am guessing that we need to know them and stand with them if we are to gain their perspective on this world and entry into the Kingdom which Jesus has put in their charge.

Saints have what I call Kingdom vision, which enables them to see in our midst that of the Kingdom which is already. They have this vision because, like Martin and Brigid, they have joined ranks with the poor. Many of us can't see beyond the not-yetness of the Kingdom, the wars and poverty which denigrate human life. Others may think they see the "already" of the Kingdom when they peer from windows whose views hide the poor. But what they see is a fool's mirage. Recall Jesus' parable about rich Dives and poor Lazarus. While living in this Kingdom, Dives never noticed Lazarus, who fought with dogs for the scraps of food that fell from the plate of Dives. When the men die, their fortunes are reversed. Dives begs Abraham to send Lazarus with a drink to comfort him in his agony but Abraham replies that it is too late for Dives. Blinded by his wealth Dives never saw Lazarus when they walked on the old earth and so it was too late for Dives to join Lazarus in the new earth. Our perspective, what we see, is determined by where and with whom we stand.

Our worldy vision is a tunnel vision, a form of blindness which leaves us focused on how to get ahead in this world rather than into the next. Saints see this world but don't cling to it because they know the promises and treasures of this world are fleeting.

While most of us dwell in the not-yetness of the Kingdom, the saints live in the already. They dance there while seeking partners among the rest of us to join them in the presence of the divine. This invitation to dance is a beckoning for us to further reveal the alreadyness of the Kingdom. We can do so by embracing Kingdom values and abandoning the ways of the world. The values of the world – greed, competition, selfishness, violence and the like – ought to be anachronisms for Christians. They are values of an age that is, or should be, passing.

The opposite of an anachronism is a prolepticism. Whereas an anachronism would be a college student typing a paper today on a manual typewriter a prolepticism would be akin to a college student from the 1970s who had access to a computer. A prolepticism is something out of a future time, a foreshadowing of how things will be done. We are called by the saints to join them in proleptic living by practicing Kingdom values such as sharing, cooperation, community, and nonviolence. In so doing our lungs will be filled with the fresh air of the new heaven; and like an invigorating spring breeze, God's breath will exhale unto the new earth

With the vision of saints we can see the intimate connection between the new heaven and the new earth. What the vision of saints reveals is that liberation and salvation are two sides of the same coin. To gain extraordinary vision we must dwell among the poor. In the new heaven everyone will be saved. In the new earth no one will be oppressed. There can be no new heaven without a new earth and there will be no new earth until everyone is free from poverty, fear, and violence. Standing with the poor we further create the new earth and further reveal the new heaven. To live with the persecuted is to liberate, to liberate is to accept Jesus' invitation to salvation, to accept salvation is to walk among the saints.

We need not fear this invitation, knowing that if we are righteous, our souls will be safe from torment in the hand of God (Sol. 3:1), a hand which is formed by the many hands of the poor and victimized. When we choose to place ourselves in community with them we are choosing to be in communion with our God. As saints we surrender ourselves to become the sacred tools which the hand of God will use to open wide the gates to the new Jerusalem.

We use violence against our enemies, we hoard wealth while many go hungry, we compete rather than cooperate – because still we doubt. We are like the foolish from the Wisdom of Solomon who think the righteous have died because they have surrendered unto the hand of God. We are like Mary who challenged Jesus in bitter disappointment: "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." In our disbelief we fear that this is our only life, and our present riches are our only reward.

In the Gospel we are told that Jesus wept at the news of Lazarus' death, which led some in the crowd to ponder, "could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" I think the spectators were confused by Jesus' reaction. I don't think Jesus wept because Lazarus died, because Jesus knew that Lazarus had been born unto eternal life. Instead, I think Jesus wept because though he had successfully opened the eyes of the blind to the world before them, he had yet to open the eyes of the doubting to the new earth awaiting us.

We are called to be saints who dwell in the new heaven. It is our destiny. It is God's desire for each of us, rich and poor, beloved and despised, to be warmly held in Her hands safe from torment both in this world and the next.

Like Lazarus, Jesus has unbound us from the death of this world and removed the cloth from our eyes so that we can see the way to the new world. All that remains for us to become saints is to open our eyes and use our ordinary vision to see the poor amongs us and thus gain the extraordinary vision that reveals Christ in their midst waiting for us to join him.

In a few minutes we will leave our pews to receive Jesus in the form of bread. This has become an ordinary experience. An extraordinary encounter with Christ would be for us to leave the comfort of our homes to be received by Christ wherever he is disguised beyond recognition. That is the call of sainthood made to all of us.

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