The following just arrived from Jean Athey, the Brookeville woman who traveled to Cairo to participate Thursday in an international demonstration in support of the inhabitants of blockaded Gaza, only to be stopped when the Egyptians limited the number allowed into the territory.

Over 1,300 people came to Cairo this week from all over the world, hoping to join Palestinians today in a nonviolent Gaza Freedom March to end the blockade. Since we were prohibited from going to Gaza, we decided to march in Cairo today instead. We hoped to step off at 10 a.m., the same time as the march in Gaza was to begin.

Many people managed to make it to the location selected for the march—near the Egyptian Museum-- but they were quickly and forcibly removed from the street; a few were injured and some had their cameras destroyed. Once off the street and onto the sidewalk, protesters were surrounded by riot police, and there they remained all day.

I was one of those who didn’t manage to get to the march. Egyptian police surrounded the Lotus Hotel early this morning, where many people are staying, including me, and they prevented us from leaving. The government also cut off Internet access to the hotel. We were able to go outside directly in front of the hotel, which is on a busy street, but we could not cross the police line. So, we set up a demonstration on the sidewalk, chanting, waving signs, singing, and talking to passers-by and to the police.

We finally stopped the demonstration at about 3 p.m.

A lovely French woman named Delphine is my roommate, and tonight we went together to eat dinner. We saw a young couple going into the same restaurant as us and speaking American English. Assuming they were with the March, we invited them to join us, which they did. But it turned out that they were simply in Egypt on vacation. We began to tell them about the March, which they found interesting. Both were well-educated, but neither knew anything at all about Palestine, Gaza, or the issues we are trying to address. Nothing. Nada. Rien.

It was disheartening to see the level of education that is needed in the US if American policy is ever to change. They were a very nice couple and highly supportive of our actions, once they understood what they are about.

There is so much work to do in the US.

Tonight we will ring in the New Year in Tahrir Square, altogether. We hope, we pray, that 2010 will bring some relief and some hope for all Palestinians and, especially, that the siege of Gaza will end.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

The Pray at the Pump Movement, which gained notice recently when it helped to organize a prayer vigil for Tiger Woods, now is urging President Barack Obama to visit conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh in the hospital.

Limbaugh was resting comfortably on Thursday after suffering chest pains while vacationing in Hawaii, according to a statement on the Web site of his radio program. Obama, Limbaugh’s principal target, is also vacationing in Hawaii.

The Pray at the Pump Movement, which describes Limbaugh as Obama’s “enemy,” is “strongly urging” a visit.

"It is the right and Christian thing to do," said Rockville resident Rocky Twyman, founder of the group that says its prayers and activism lowered gas prices in the country. “These actions would be unpopular in the Democratic Party, but may help to unite the country as we approach a New Year full of endless possibilities of peace."

“”Because the movement to lower gas was national in scope, we have prayer warriors in Hawaii that are ready to offer powerful prayers at a session where both men are present,” the group says in a release. “This small gesture could be the beginning of the start of a Glorious Revolution of Peace.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (63)
        

The High Court of Malaysia has ruled that a Catholic newspaper may use the word “Allah” and that a government order banning its use was illegal, null and void, The Star of Malaysia reports.

The court ruled on Thursday that the name “Allah” was not exclusive to Islam, The Star reports. Archbishop Tan Sri Murphy Pakiam, who as head of the Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur is publisher of the weekly Catholic newspaper The Herald, had filed for a judicial review after the government banned its use outside of Islam.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

For the second year in a row, President Barack Obama is the most admired man in the United States, according to a survey by USA Today and Gallup.

Obama was cited by 30 percent of respondents as the man they admired most, the third highest score by a president since Gallup began the year-end poll in 1948. The only presidents to score higher were George W. Bush in 2001, following the attacks of Sept. 11, and John F. Kennedy in 1961, his first year in office.

On the women's side, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and 2008 Republican Vice Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin finished in a virtual dead heat, with 16 and 15 percent.

For the second year in a row, George W. Bush finished a distant second to Obama, this time with 4 percent. Former South African President Nelson Mandela finished third with 3 percent.

Two faith leaders appeared among the male top five: Pope Benedict XVI and the Rev. Billy Graham tied with Glenn Beck and Bill Gates for fourth place, all with 2 percent.

Rounding out the top five women were Oprah Winfrey, third with 8 percent, Michelle Obama, fourth with 7 percent, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Queen Elizabeth II, tied for fifth with 2 percent.

Elizabeth can be called a religious leader, too, inasmuch as her titles include defender of the faith and supreme governor of the Church of England.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
        

God created women to be companions to men, not to be slaves nor bosses, Pope Benedict XVI said during his weekly audience on Wednesday, according to Agence France-Presse.

"God created woman from Adam's rib and not, for instance, from his head, so she would not be dominating, or a slave, but his companion," Benedict said, quoting 12th-century theologian and Paris bishop Peter Lombard, according to AFP.

"Just as woman was created from Adam's rib while he was asleep, the Church sprung from the sacraments that spread from Christ's side as he was asleep on the cross, which . . . delivered us from suffering and wiped out our guilt."

Benedict had said Sunday that family life was "based on the marriage of a man and a woman," a foundation that should be "protected and promoted because it is of utter importance to humanity's presence and future."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

In no particular order, as selected by the brain trust at In Good Faith world headquarters, and barring any unforeseen developments in the hours that remain. Comments?

Jewish Community Center opens on Saturdays, over objections of Orthodox community

Maryland priest becomes first lesbian Episcopal Bishop

Baltimore Hebrew University closes; reopens at Towson University

Muslims meet in Baltimore, denounce terror

Episcopal nuns join Catholic Church en masse

Catholic Diocese of Wilmington declares Bankruptcy

Death of Rabbi Mark Loeb

Towson Catholic High School closure surprises students, parents

Ecumenical Patriarch, head of Orthodox Christianity, visits Maryland

City Council passes first-in-nation regulations on faith-based crisis pregnancy centers

Atheists target Baltimore, ask: Are you good without God?

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

Egypt has agreed to allow 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators into blockaded Gaza, but they do not appear to include any of the Marylanders who were planning to participate in the “Gaza Freedom March” on Thursday.

Brookeville resident Jean Athey, one of three members of Peace Action Montgomery now in Egypt for the event, e-mails that demonstrators shut out of the Gaza march are planning to march in Cairo instead.

“We are expecting that the Egyptians will not be pleased,” Athey writes. “So, we are prepared for anything.”

Agence France-Press reports that some 1,300 demonstrators from more than 40 countries are in Cairo for the Gaza march, which comes on the first anniversary of the three-week conflict between Hamas and Israel that left more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.

AFP reports that the Egyptian offer, which follows demonstrations and a hunger strike, has divided demonstrators. Egyptian authorities initially had refused to allow demonstrators to cross into Gaza.

“It’s a partial victory,” American activist Medea Benjamin told AFP. “It shows that mass pressure has an effect.”

But others expressed anger.

"This just gives the Egyptian government a photo-up and the chance say we allowed people through," Canadian activist Bassem Omar told AFP.

Athey has written three letters from Cairo, which we reproduce after the jump.

Gaza Freedom March

On the Flight to Cairo, December 26, 2009

Our goal: to draw attention to Gaza and end the blockade.

We intend to shed light on the terrible suffering of the 1.5 million people subsisting in the desperate little piece of land called the Gaza Strip. We hope that if people world-wide understand what is happening, something will be done—and the people of Gaza can once again live like human beings.

On the anniversary of last year’s horrific attack on Gaza by Israel, we had planned to join with Gazans on a three-mile non-violent solidarity march, at the same time that people in many countries around the world hold their own local demonstrations and vigils. Over thirteen hundred people from 412 countries are on their way to Cairo for the march, and we had planned to board buses on December 28 for the five-hour drive to Rafah, the border crossing between Egypt and Gaza. Our historical models for the Gaza Freedom March are Gandhi’s salt march and Martin Luther King’s Selma march.

We have all agreed to abide by non-violence guidelines. We know, of course, that the forces for violence in the region are entrenched and powerful, but we believe that our non-violent witness will be part of a moral force pushing back against war and injustice. We hope that our presence can show the world that change is both possible and necessary. Because of this hope, we have given up our Christmas holidays, and each of us has dedicated two thousand dollars or more for expenses—a small cost, indeed, given what we would like to accomplish.

Everyone has packed a few items to bring to people in Gaza, items that are now either unavailable to Gazans or so expensive that, in a region with 74% unemployment [i], impossible for people to purchase. I packed several sweaters for children, a few packages of markers, a couple of toys, and calcium supplements for pregnant and nursing mothers. Some people are bringing books and laptops, desperately needed by students.

My offerings are pathetic, given the vast need, but it is all I could carry.

A few days ago, we learned that the Egyptian government has decided to prevent us from entering into Gaza. Previous delegations have been allowed in. Of course, those delegations were much smaller than the thirteen hundred coming for the Gaza Freedom March.

Even after learning of the Egyptian decision, almost everyone decided to go ahead and travel to Cairo, hoping that Egypt will relent and allow us entry, and if that doesn’t happen, that we can mount a public protest in Cairo, even though doing so might well lead to our arrests.

Egyptian authorities have told March organizers that if anyone displays banners or protest signs, or if people gather in groups larger than six, we will be arrested. None of us want to be arrested, especially in Egypt, a country known for its harsh prisons and torture. But, it hardly seems that we can travel to Egypt and just go look at the pyramids. While contemplating what I felt comfortable and brave enough to do, I happened to read a statement on-line from the leadership of a group in the West Bank town of Bil’iin. Bil’in has held weekly demonstrations for months in non-violent resistance to the construction of the illegal Israeli wall that will impoverish and destroy the village. As a result of these demonstrations, villagers are regularly tear-gassed, shot with rubber-coated steel bullets, subjected to sound bombs, beaten up, arrested and even killed. Here is what the people of Bil’in wrote to us:

"Egypt has announced that the Rafah border into Gaza will be closed over the coming weeks to the 1,300 international delegates attempting to march in solidarity with the people of occupied Palestine . . . on the anniversary of Israel’s horrific Cast Lead massacre that killed over 1,400 people. The powerful and diverse collaboration of international support must now choose its response to this horrific injustice. Will you stand waiting permission at the gates of Gaza? We say that you need not wait; if Egypt will not open their border, then the time for action is now. We encourage and support the escalation of non-violent direct action. It is up to you to take the next steps. It is no surprise that Egypt is not allowing the march to continue, so the natural progression towards a victory over this injustice is creative tactical escalation. If you cannot march on the roads, then set up camp and sleep on them instead; fast in solidarity with the people who are dying of starvation; refuse to be stopped by their temporary boundaries. We can look to the lessons, the creativity, and the determination of our sisters and brothers from historical resistance movements.

"We are the voice of the voiceless, the arms of those physically held captive, the eyes of those blinded by hate.

"There are those of us who resist because we have no choice, we resist to live. And there are those of us who know that no one is free until we are all free, and we use our bodies and the privilege of our relative freedom to resist oppression in all its forms.

"There is no time for words without action. Here in Bil’in, we will be demonstrating in solidarity with Gaza and all those trying to enter."

We have learned that Egypt has forbidden the bus companies to transport us to the border. Egyptian authorities have cancelled the space that had been rented for our group meeting scheduled for the evening of December 27. It is becoming increasingly unlikely that we will be able to get anywhere near Gaza.

So, somehow, we will take a stand in Cairo.

Gaza Freedom March

Second Letter: December 27-28

The first day in Cairo was a bit chaotic: Organizers struggled to communicate with over 1,300 people dispersed in various hotels throughout Cairo, many of whom did not have email or phone service. Some of us found that our hotel reservations were imaginary, and so we had to make alternative arrangements. Despite the challenges, it was an amazing day.

In the morning, about a hundred people brought flowers, ribbons and poems to leave on the Kasr el Nil Bridge that spans the Nile River, in memory of the hundreds of Gazans killed by the Israelis exactly one year ago. People walked onto the bridge in groups of six or less—a gathering of more than six is illegal, we had been told. Nevertheless, the police soon came and ordered everyone off the bridge.

We planned another action for the early evening: An ancient type of sail boat called a felucca has plied the Nile for centuries. March organizers had rented ten of these, reserving them in advance, and we intended to sail our feluccas on the Nile and place candles in paper cups in the water. We imagined hundreds of candles floating in the Nile at sunset, each candle commemorating an innocent person killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza. But in the end, we were unable to get to the boats; the police closed down the felucca operations and surrounded our group on the sidewalk, where we remained for a couple of hours, chanting “Free Gaza” and waving banners and flags.

Months ago, March organizers had obtained a permit for our entire group to meet in a church in downtown Cairo in the evening, where final decisions would be made and instructions given. However, a week ago, the Egyptian government revoked the permit, and so, after leaving the felucca protest, we all converged in a large, open-air square for our meeting. It was a bit difficult to hear, given the traffic noise and the size of our group, but we soon broke up into smaller groups where we could discuss our next steps.

In the meantime, a group of about 200 French people gathered at the French Embassy, where they were originally supposed to board buses to take them to the border. But the government prohibited the bus companies from transporting anyone from the Gaza Freedom March, and so the French mounted a protest in front of the Embassy. First, they lay down in the street—a major thoroughfare—and kept the street for about five hours. The French Ambassador, supportive of the protesters, negotiated with the police, and subsequently the group moved onto the sidewalk where they set up tents and spent the night. Over twenty-four hours later, they are still there. I went to the Embassy this morning to see the protest and found a double row of police in riot gear lining the entire block, with the French group inside the police line. Some 20 paddy wagons were parked across the street. I believe that the French protesters will stay camped out there for a long time, unless they are arrested.

We were all supposed to go to Gaza today, but as with the French group, our buses were prohibited from transporting us.

This afternoon, all of us except the French gathered on the plaza outside the offices of the United Nations. We chanted, waved signs, and planned next steps, encircled by police, for five hours. Several people initiated a hunger strike, including one 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, Heddy Epstein. While we waited outside, three of the March organizers negotiated with UN representatives inside, to see if the UN could persuade the Egyptian government to allow us into Gaza—or even allow some of us in—and to allow in the humanitarian aid we had brought with us. But these talks were unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, six Germans attempted to get to the border via public transportation, but their bus was stopped at a checkpoint and they were taken off and detained. The bus, full of Egyptians, was held up for seven hours as the police sorted out what to do. The Germans reported that the Egyptian people on the bus were incredibly kind and appreciative, even though they had been greatly inconvenienced by the seven-hour delay. Finally, the Germans were put on another bus and returned to Cairo.

Tomorrow, we Americans will go to the American Embassy to urge the U.S. to pressure Egypt to open the border to Gaza. Other nationality groups will engage in other actions.

We are determined to break the siege. The situation of the people of Gaza is intolerable, and the world must respond.

Gaza Freedom March

Letter Three—December 29

Free Gaza actions occurred all over Cairo today, and so the police, who are often in riot gear, have had a busy day—they show up wherever we go. They are incredibly young, maybe 18 or 19. Typically, when the police work a demonstration, they surround us with moveable steel fences, which they line up behind-- sometimes two deep--and they watch us with what seems to be curiosity, not malice. However, their innocent appearance doesn’t mean they won’t become aggressive; for example, police today were very rough with several Spanish protesters. As internationals, though, we have great protection, not enjoyed by locals. Some Egyptians have joined in these protests, and we find their courage astounding.

This morning, I was at the U.S. Embassy with a group of about 40 other Americans. We went hoping to see the Ambassador, but instead we were surrounded by Egyptian police in riot gear and kept penned in for some five hours. The police told us that they did this at the behest of the American Embassy, but later the “political security officer” of the Embassy denied it. So, who is lying? It is interesting that the French ambassador spent the night outside with the French protesters when they first occupied the sidewalk in front of their embassy, but the American ambassador refused to see us and apparently had us detained, and for no reason.

We went to the American Embassy to ask the U.S. to prevail upon the Egyptian government and allow our nonviolent delegation into Gaza. The U.S. has tremendous leverage with Egypt, of course, and if the U.S. asked Egypt to allow us to go to Gaza, the border would surely be opened immediately. Three members of our group were allowed inside the Embassy to speak to an American representative, while the rest of us were prevented from moving outside our temporary pen. Our spokespersons reminded the political officer with whom they met that when Barack Obama came to Cairo in June, he spoke movingly of the power of nonviolence as a way to resist oppression. The President said,

For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding.

The Gaza Freedom March embodies that “peaceful and determined insistence” about which the President spoke. I wonder if the Ambassador heard his speech.

In that same speech, President Obama acknowledged the dire circumstances of Palestinians in general, and Gazans in particular. He said,

So let there be no doubt: the state of the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own. . . Israel must also live up to its obligations to ensure that Palestinians can live, and work, and develop their society. And just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel's security . . . Progress in the daily lives of the Palestinian people must be part of a road to peace, and Israel must take concrete steps to enable such progress.

And yet, it seems that we Americans have turned our backs on the people of Gaza: we are doing nothing to end the siege, which is creating unimaginable suffering. And we have done nothing to compel Israel to end the siege. Indeed, the U.S. is presently facilitating a strengthening of the siege: it was announced last week that the Army Corps of Engineers is assisting Egypt in further isolating the people of Gaza by helping in the construction of a huge underground wall. This wall will cut off the only remaining sources of food, clothes, medicine, and all other necessities of life, which now enter Gaza through tunnels from Egypt. How shameful that the U.S. is working to increase the suffering of the people of Gaza rather than to diminish it.

In his Nobel acceptance speech, President Obama said,

As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life's work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak -nothing passive - nothing naïve - in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

Our President thus applauds nonviolent action and recognizes its strength. The Gaza Freedom March was conceived as a nonviolent response to what President Obama characterized as an intolerable situation and a humanitarian crisis—a crisis that has become increasingly dire since he spoke here in June.

Thus, we are attempting to do exactly what President Obama recommended, and yet when we went to our own Embassy for intervention with the Egyptian government, we were surrounded by police and detained for hours in an open-air pen, an appropriate symbol for Gaza itself, actually.

President Obama said in Oslo,

It is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive. It does not exist where children cannot aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.

In Gaza, because of U.S. complicity with Israel in the blockade, people do not have enough food, clean water or medicine. There are no books or paper for school children, and the schools that were bombed cannot be rebuilt because building materials are not allowed into the Strip. Unemployment is at 75%. There is little hope in Gaza.

President Obama ended his eloquent Oslo speech with these stirring words:

So let us reach for the world that ought to be - that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls. . . Somewhere today, in this world, a young protestor awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on. Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, who believes that a cruel world still has a place for his dreams.

Let us live by their example.

And yet, when we U.S. citizens attempt to speak with representatives of our own Embassy--in a client state--about our desires to help alleviate a dire humanitarian situation, we are detained for hours like animals and refused an audience. Is this the audacity of hope? Is this change we can believe in?

We ask our government to live by the words of our President and to help us end the illegal and immoral siege of Gaza.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

Pope Benedict XVI has conferred the honorary title of monsignor on nine area priests, the Archdiocese of Baltimore announced on Wednesday.

The priests are:

The Rev. Richard J. Bozzelli, Pastor, Corpus Christi Church, Baltimore;
The Rev. William A. Collins, Jr., Associate Pastor Emeritus, Holy Family, Randallstown;
The Rev. Carl F. Cummings, Pastor, St. Jane Frances de Chantal Church, Riviera Beach;
The Rev. James W. Hannon, Pastor, St. Ann, Grantsville, St. Gabriel, Barton, St. Joseph, Midland, St. Michael, Frostburg, St. Peter, Westernport;
The Rev. J. Bruce Jarboe, Pastor, Church of the Crucifixion, Good Shepherd Church, and Holy Trinity Church, Glen Burnie;
The Rev. Edward M. Miller, Pastor, St. Bernardine Church, Baltimore;
The Rev. Richard J. Murphy, Pastor, St. John the Evangelist Church, Frederick;
The Rev. Jay F. O’Connor, Director, Office of Clergy Personnel; and
The Rev. Kevin T. Schenning, Pastor, St. Joseph Church, Fullerton.

Collins, who retired earlier this year after working for nearly 40 years in the Metropolitan Tribunal, received the title of Prelate of Honor to His Holiness. Bozzelli, Cummings, Hannon, Jarboe, Miller, Murphy, O’Connor, and Schenning were named Chaplains to His Holiness.

"I am grateful to the Holy Father for affirming the outstanding contributions of these fine priests, who give so much of themselves for the glory of God and the spiritual growth of His people," Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien said in a statement. "Such recognition is particularly challenging in this Archdiocese, which is blessed to have so many dedicated and faithful priests serving in parishes, schools, and other institutions."

Hannon, who pastors five churches, was the subject of a story by Sun colleague Joe Burris earlier this year. We spoke to Jarboe just last week for a story about how priests prepare their Christmas homilies. For Jaboe, the honor comes as he transitions to rector of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.

An investiture ceremony is set for 5:30 p.m. March 7 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The conviction of a 76-year-old Catholic priest last week for trespassing and criminal mischief during a protest at a nuclear missile silo in Colorado has divided local opinions there.

According to media reports, the Rev. Carl Kabat cut a hole in the fence around a Minuteman III missile silo at F.E. Warren Air Force Base last August, hung antiwar banners, tried to open the missile’s lid and prayed. It was the 18th conviction for the veteran peace activist, who at one time served 10 years in federal prison for a similar protest.

Following a trial in which the Oblate priest represented himself, a tearful jury found him guilty in his latest protest and Weld County Court Judge Dana Nichols sentenced him to the 137 days he had already served.

In an editorial, the Greeley Tribune describes Kabat as ornery, funny and likable, but says the conviction was correct:

… we're glad the prosecution recommended the maximum of one year for each of the two misdemeanor criminal mischief and trespassing charges. The prosecution's determination to put a harmless, old priest behind bars sends a message that anyone who messes with those dangerous missiles, or even the silos that contain them, could face some pretty hard time.

In fact, it's the Catholic Church's belief that nuclear weapons are a crime against humanity that makes it easy for us to side with the prosecution in this case. The church knows nuclear weapons are capable of wiping us out. Just imagine if someone who supports Kabat's beliefs, but not his morals, decides to push it even further to send that message.

We honestly wouldn't mind deterring anyone from having those thoughts, and we believe Kabat would support that thinking: He applauded the jury members for their service.

But you don't have to break the law to protest. In the future, we'd encourage Kabat to use his obvious charisma and organize a protest with signs and his strong beliefs and leave the bolt cutters at home.

But Denver Post columnist Bill Johnson writes admiringly of Kabat:

He has spent the better part of the past three decades in prison for staging similar protests here and across the United States against the missiles, whose very existence he calls "simply insane …"

I don't have many heroes, but Carl Kabat is one of them. I deeply admire men of conviction, particularly those who buck the system and gnaw relentlessly at it in the pursuit of peace.

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

Historic St. Ignatius Church, just up the street from The Baltimore Sun, will hold its annual New Year's Eve interfaith service on Thursday.

Jews, Christians and Muslims will gather for the 17th annual service at 8:30 p.m. at the Catholic church at the corner of Calvert and Madison Streets.

The Right Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, will deliver the sermon. Gov. Martin O'Malley and Mayor Sheila Dixon are expected to attend.

A musical program will begin at 8 p.m. A reception will follow the service. Tickets for the free event may be reserved calling 410-727-3848 or sending an email to parish@st-ignatius.net.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)
Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Events, Interfaith, Islam, Judaism, People, Politics
        

Over the last two decades, the Catholic Church has been as rich a target as any for The Simpsons. Now, as the primetime cartoon celebrates its 20th anniversary, L'Osservatore Romano -- the Vatican newspaper -- is offering praise.

We rely on Catholic News Service to translate and paraphrase from the Italian:

Marking the 20th anniversary of the Simpsons, created by Matt Groening, the paper described the show as a “tender and irreverent, scandalous and ironic, boisterous and profound, philosophical - and sometimes even theological - nutty synthesis of pop culture and of the lukewarm and nihilistic American middle class.”

Of the myriad themes treated in the show’s almost 450 episodes, “one of the most important - and most serious” is that of God and the relationship between each person and God, done in a way that mirrors “the religious and spiritual confusion of our times,” it said.

“Simultaneously reflecting modern people’s indifference toward and great need for the sacred, Homer ... finds his ultimate refuge in God” - even if he doesn’t always get God’s name right, it said.

The paper cited one episode in which Homer sort of prays: “I’m usually not a religious man, but if you’re up there, save me, Superman.”

Misnaming God actually is just a momentary lapse on Homer’s part, the paper said, “because in reality the two know each other quite well.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (23)
        

The Baltimore Jewish Council has joined in the growing opposition to the BDS movement, which aims to punish Israel for what organizers characterize as decades of oppression of Palestinians, the Baltimore Jewish Times reports.

The council board voted unanimously to endorse a push for a "national and community-based strategy” to counter what it described as an effort to "delegitimize and demonize" the Jewish state, the Jewish Times reports.

“We’re reacting to a particularly assiduous type of activity, which is essentially anti-Israel and often anti-Semitic in nature here in the United States and around the world,” Abba Poliakoff, chair of the council's Israel Awareness and Advocacy Committee told fellow board members. “The BDS movement is a strategic, organized campaign that targets Israel.”

The resolution came to the BJC through the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Jewish Times reports. The national coordinating body of Jewish community relations councils wants local community groups to endorse the resolution, which it hopes will be adopted at its annual national plenum in February.

Read the story at jewishtimes.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

It survived Hitler, Stalin, the decision to make Hebrew the official language of the State of Israel and the adoption of English by immigrants to the United States.

Now Yiddish, for 1,000 years the everyday language of European Jews, is facing another threat: budget cuts.

We have a story in Monday's Baltimore Sun about the dim future for Yiddish at the University of Maryland, one of the few schools in the nation that has consistently offered intruction in the Germanic tongue (Harvard, Columbia, Michigan and UCLA are others.)

The recent announcement that the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies would be dropping it in the fall shocked area Yiddishists. The center now has cobbled together the money to pay its longtime instructor through the next academic year. But after that, director Hayim Lapin says, it is unlikely to continue funding a full-time faculty member dedicated to the language.

"This is not about Yiddish," says Lapin, whose parents spoke and taught the language. "What this is about is responding to the budget crisis and actually cutting back on just about all of our visiting faculty and programming, So we have less Bible than we had. We have less history than we had. We have less or no Yiddish."

Professor Miriam Isaacs, who has taught elementary and intermediate Yiddish at Maryland for 15 years, worries about a future without the language.

"It's not just at Maryland that I'm concerned," says Isaacs, born in postwar Germany, where Yiddish was her first language.

"We're at a critical point in that the generation of Holocaust survivors, my parents, they're not around anymore," she says. "Or if they're around, they can't do a lot of translating. So if nobody learns it, you know, the Holocaust Museum archive is full of Yiddish materials. The University of Maryland has been acquiring Yiddish books galore. Who is going to read them? Who is going to be able to have access to them?"

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

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

From Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, the Associated Press has an interesting story today about Archbishop Paul Hinder, spiritual leader of the 2 million Catholics in Muslim Arabia:

The Vatican's top cleric in the heart of Muslim Arabia tends to a flock of 2 million Christians spread around six desert nations. But he has to do it quietly: Most of them must still pray in secret and are forbidden to display crosses and other symbols of their faith.

From his base in the emirate of Abu Dhabi on the Persian Gulf, Archbishop Paul Hinder travels the Arabian Peninsula, even slipping in and out of Saudi Arabia — the birthplace of Islam, where restrictions on Christians are the toughest.

"We are tolerated, but not popular here," Hinder said in an interview in the archbishop's living quarters inside a Christian compound in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

He spoke wearing the traditional hooded robe of his Capuchin order. The white garb blends in just fine with the Arab robes worn by men in the region, so he wears it in public — but without a cross around his neck or the belt of three knots that also mark the order.

"People here know who I am, although I never wear a cross when I go outside out of respect for local conditions," said Hinter, a Swiss citizen.

Still, he says, there are signs of slow change, even in Saudi Arabia, where small groups who in the past would have been punished or deported if caught practicing the Christian services are now left in peace to pray privately.

Read the rest of the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

A woman jumped the barriers in St. Peter's Basilica and knocked down Pope Benedict XVI at the start of Christmas Eve Mass, but the 82-year-old pontiff got up unhurt and proceeded as planned with Thursday's service, the Associated Press is reporting.

Witness video obtained by the AP showed a woman dressed in a red hooded sweat shirt vaulting over the wooden barriers that cordoned off the basilica's main aisle and rushing toward the pope before being swarmed by bodyguards.

The video showed the woman grabbing the pope's vestments as she was taken down by guards, with Benedict then falling on top of her.

The commotion occurred as the pope's procession was making its way toward the main altar and shocked gasps rang out among the thousands who packed the basilica. The procession came to a halt, the music stopped and security rushed to the trouble spot.

A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini said the woman appeared to be mentally unstable and had been taken into custody by Vatican police. He said she also knocked down Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, who was taken to hospital for a checkup.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien, spiritual leader of the area's half million Catholics, has released a statement on the health care bill approved Thursday by the Senate. The legislation did not include the equivalent of the Stupak amendment in the House bill, which tightened restrictions on abortion:

"As expected, Maryland’s two U.S. senators were among the 60 members of the U.S. Senate this morning to approve a version of health care reform legislation that sadly falls short in three areas of critical importance to the Catholic community: respect for life, affordability/access, and inclusion of immigrants.

"The undoing of federal policies on abortion in the Senate bill is particularly alarming, and reflects a significant difference from provisions – included in the House bill – that simply maintain the status quo in this area.

"The bill also does not adequately protect conscience rights, does not adequately allow for access for all immigrant families, and still leaves 23 million Americans uninsured. Until these concerns are addressed, the version approved today by the Senate demands our opposition.

"There are many who should be commended for their committed involvement and good-faith efforts to date to move our country closer to the laudable goal of health care reform.

"I also wish to applaud the thousands of constituents in Maryland and throughout the country who have continued, even as we draw so close to Christmas Day, to communicate their concerns to their elected officials. I pray that those efforts will bear fruit in the New Year, and that the House and Senate will come to agreement on a final bill that can be supported by all those who have worked so hard to achieve genuine reform without sacrificing basic moral principles."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (22)
        

In the months since we started In Good Faith, we've attracted readers and commenters from all over the world. Ties to the Baltimore area will be helpful in spotting some familiar faces in the video above (the list appears at the end).

I wanted to take a moment to say a sincere thank you to all who have stopped by, and particularly to those who have joined in the spirited debate taking shape on these pages. During this holiday season, we wish the very best to everyone of every faith, and no faith at all.

I expect to be posting only lightly over the next few days as I take time off to spend with my family. As my father would say: Talk amongst yourselves.

Best,
Matt

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

Bishop John H. Ricard, who served 13 years in the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, is alert and resting comfortably after suffering a stroke on Tuesday, according to the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee.

The 69-year-old bishop was upgraded from critical to serious condition at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola, according to the diocese. He was admitted to Sacred Heart on Tuesday evening with symptoms of a stroke, according to the diocese. A CT scan confirmed the stroke.

Ricard was a popular auxiliary bishop in Baltimore from 1984 until 1997, when he was tapped by Pope John Paul II to head the Pensacola-Tallahassee diocese. The Baton Rouge, La., native was ordained a Josephite father in 1968.

The Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee is requesting prayers for Ricard's recovery, and has set up an online guestbook at which messages may be left for him. The Pensacola News Journal has a story at pnj.com.

Thanks to former Baltimore Sun religion writer John Rivera for the heads-up.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Garrison Keilor may be an unabashed liberal, but he's also an unapologetic traditionalist.

Which is why word that the Unitarian First Church of Cambridge, Mass., where Emerson preached, has rewritten "Silent Night" to render it, in Keillor's words, "more about silence and night and not so much about God." has upset him so.

Keillor, of the Prairie Home Companion, the Writer's Almanac and a syndicated column that has long run in The Baltimore Sun, has a request/demand of non-believers: Leave Christmas alone.

Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that's their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite "Silent Night." If you don't believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn "Silent Night" and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write "Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah"? No, we didn't.

Christmas is a Christian holiday - if you're not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Yule instead or dance around in druid robes for the solstice. Go light a big log, go wassailing and falalaing until you fall down, eat figgy pudding until you puke, but don't mess with the Messiah.

Christmas does not need any improvements. It is a common, ordinary experience that resists brilliant innovation. Just make some gingerbread persons and light three candles and sing softly in dim light about the poor man gathering winter fu-u-el and the radiant beams and the holly and the ivy, and you've got it. Too many people work too hard to make Christmas perfect, find the perfect gifts, get a turkey that reaches 100 percent of potential. Perfection is a goal of brilliant people, and it is unnecessary where Christmas is concerned.

Read the column at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

Former President Jimmy Carter is offering the Jewish community an apology for any of his "words and deeds" that may have upset them, the Associated Press reports.

Carter writes in an open letter to the Jewish community this week that he hopes the new year will bring peace between Israel and its neighbors, according to AP writer Greg Bluestein. He says "we must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel."

He adds: "I offer an Al Het for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so."

Al Het is a prayer said on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. It signifies a plea for forgiveness.

Carter has been criticized by some in the Jewish community who contend his 2006 book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" unfairly compared Israeli treatment of Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza to the legalized racial oppression that once existed in South Africa.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

The Vatican says a weekend move to push Pope Pius XII closer to sainthood is not a hostile act against Jews, the Associated Press reports.

Jewish groups expressed concern after Pope Benedict XVI signed a decree on Saturday declaring his predecessor's "heroic virtues," a step that is necessary before he may be beatified.

Just what the World War II-era pontiff did and did not do in the face of the Holocaust have long been a source of contention among Catholics and between Catholics and Jews. A joint Vatican-Jewish commission has been studying the historical record -- which led some Jewish leaders to wonder why Benedict took this step now.

"As long as the archives of Pope Pius about the crucial period 1939 to 1945 remain closed, and until a consensus on his actions -- or inaction -- concerning the persecution of millions of Jews in the Holocaust is established, a beatification is inopportune and premature," World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder said in a statement. "While it is entirely a matter for the Catholic Church to decide on whom religious honors are bestowed, there are strong concerns about Pope Pius XII's political role during World War II which should not be ignored."

Beatification is the last major step before canonization.

In a statement issued Tuesday, the Vatican said the declaration should not be an obstacle to dialogue between Jews and the Catholic Church.

It said the pope's friendship with Jews has long been established and should be reinforced by an upcoming papal visit to Rome's synagogue.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien will be celebrating the 11:15 a.m. Mass on Sunday at Holy Spirit Church in Joppatowne, where a fire last week destroyed the parish center.

Several elderly women were at the parish center for a holiday meal when the fire started shortly before noon on Dec. 16, but no injuries were reported. Damages were estimated at $3.5 million.

O'Brien and other area clergy visited the scene to offer support. The parish of 570 families was formed in 1963.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

A South Carolina priest missed the $1 million top prize in a poker tournament to be televised this weekend but he won $100,000 for his church and he hopes his participation gives viewers a "fun twist" on their perceptions of the priesthood, the Associated Press reports.

The Rev. Andrew Trapp told the AP he entered the PokerStars.net Million Dollar Challenge in hopes of putting St. Michael Catholic Church "super close" to its $5.5 million fundraising goal to build a new facility. He also wanted to strike a public relations blow for priests.

"At the very least, even if I didn't win any prize money, I was hoping it would help people to see that priests can have fun and be normal people and hopefully get a little bit of a fun twist on the image of the priesthood," the assistant pastor said Tuesday.

The top prize went to retired New York Police detective Mike Kosowski. But Trapp won $100,000, untaxed, in a semifinal round in October for the coastal church's building fund, which has amassed $4 million after four years of fundraising.

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In England Tuesday morning, hundreds of pagans and others trekked out to Stonehenge to greet the first sunrise after the Winter Solstice. Several British news organizations have covered the event, which organizers say has grown in recent years with the understanding that the Druidic monument was more significant at the Winter Solstice than at the Summer Solstice.

"It is the most important day of the year for us because it welcomes in the new sun," pagan leader Arthur Pendragon tells The Daily Mail.

"We're here for an anti-religious reason, if any," Alison Marcetic tells The Guardian. "Pagans seem to have more fun so we'd thought we'd give it a go. We'll be celebrating Christmas but this is about showing the children that this season isn't just about getting presents. What goes on here is more basic, more tangible."

"It's one of those things you must do at least once in your life and for many of those that come they will come again and again," Stonehenge official Peter Carson tells the BBC. "It's a very special time for Stonehenge."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

We took note last week when the House of Deputies in traditionally Catholic Spain voted to ease restrictions on abortion.

Now, little more than a week after the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the municipal legislature in Mexico City has made the capital the first jurisdiction in Catholic Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage.

Mexico City lawmakers made the city the first in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage, a change that will give homosexual couples more rights, including allowing them to adopt children.

The bill passed the capital's local assembly 39-20 on Monday as supporters yelled "Yes, we could! Yes, we could!" the Associated Press reports. Leftist Mayor Marcelo Ebrard is expected to sign the measure, which also allows homosexuals to adopt children, into law.

From the AP:

Mexico City's left-led assembly has made several decisions unpopular elsewhere in this deeply Roman Catholic country, including legalizing abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. That decision sparked a backlash, with the majority of Mexico's other 32 states enacting legislation declaring life begins at conception.

The conservative Nation Action Party of President Felipe Calderon has vowed to challenge the gay marriage law in the courts. However, homosexuality is increasingly accepted in Mexico, with same-sex couples openly holding hands in parts of the capital and the annual gay pride parade drawing tens of thousands.

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Evangelist Oral Roberts was remembered Monday as a charismatic leader who deftly used television to spread the message of Christianity throughout the world, the Associated Press reports.

Thousands packed an arena at Oral Roberts University for the memorial service for the man who founded the evangelical liberal arts school. Roberts died of complications from pneumonia at the age of 91 last week in California.

"You sent us a man who we know and loved and who walked with God and never gave up the common touch," fellow evangelist Pat Robertson said during the ceremony's opening prayer. "I know you broke the mold with Oral."

Roberts rose from poverty and tent revivals to become one of the nation's most recognized and influential preachers. Roberts, along with Billy Graham, helped pioneer TV evangelism and used the power of the new medium -- and the message of God's healing power -- to build a multimillion-dollar ministry.

ORU President Mark Rutlege noted how adept Roberts was at using the medium of television to spread his message.

"There was something when Oral leaned into that TV and said, `Something good is going to happen to you today.' "

Read the Associated Press story.

AP photo

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How religious is Maryland? About average, according to a new analysis.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life on Monday released an analysis comparing the relative religiosity of the states, and Maryland (grouped with Washington, D.C.) finished near the middle in all four categories: Importance of Religion (21st), Worship Attendance (27th), Frequency of Prayer (21st) and Belief in God (22nd).

Mississippi topped the nation in all four categories, with the rest of the South close behind. It will not be a surprise that the reddest states (Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina) tended also to be the most religious, and the bluest states (California, Massachusetts, New York) tended also to be the least religious.

Interestingly, however, Alaska, home to perhaps the nation’s most publicly religious politician, ranked at or near the bottom of the list (which actually goes from 1 to 46 owing to the merging of Maryland/D.C., Connecticut/Rhode Island, Montana/Wyoming, New Hampshire/Vermont and the Dakotas).

The political launching pad of former Gov. Sarah Palin ranked 45th in Importance of Religion, last in Worship Attendance, 44th in Frequency of Prayer and 42nd and Belief in God.

Analysis with interactive rankings are at pewforum.org.

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All Sheriff Joe Arpaio wants to do is spread some holiday cheer.

Trouble is, the Arizona lawman keeps getting sued by those pesky inmates over the Christmas carols he has been piping for hours at a time into the Maricopa County jail system during the holiday season.

Arpaio, who styles himself “America’s toughest sheriff,” was crowing over the dismissal of two recent lawsuits, brought by inmates who said the music forces them to participate in a religious celebration. They were the fifth and sixth such suits dismissed in the last two years.

Inmates “should stop acting like the Grinch who stole Christmas and give up wasting the court’s time with such frivolous assertions,” Arpaio told the Associated Press.

(An inapt allusion: Holiday music didn’t provoke the Grinch to litigation; it inspired him to change. He was making off with Christmas when he heard the people of Whoville sing. And what happened then? Well, in Whoville they say that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day.)

Whether or not he’s America’s toughest sheriff, Arpaio is certainly the most notorious, having gained both an ardent following and a legion of critics by housing prisoners in tents in the Arizona desert, dressing them in pink, cutting meals from three a day to two and creating what he says are the world’s first female and juvenile chain gangs.

He has focused particular attention on arresting and detaining undocumented immigrants. Most recently, he has been accused of using his police powers to try to intimidate political opponents.

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office says music from all countries and faiths is played.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The surprise decision of Pope Benedict XVI to move Pope Pius XII closer to sainthood has drawn questions and criticism from Jewish leaders.

Pius was one of 17 Catholics found by Benedict on Saturday to have had "heroic virtues" in life. He is now "venerable," and is a candidate for beatification, the step before canonization.

Just what the World War II-era pontiff did and did not do in the face of the Holocaust have long been a source of contention among Catholics and between Catholics and Jews. A joint Vatican-Jewish commission has been studying the historical record -- which led some Jewish leaders to wonder why Benedict took this step now.

"As long as the archives of Pope Pius about the crucial period 1939 to 1945 remain closed, and until a consensus on his actions -- or inaction -- concerning the persecution of millions of Jews in the Holocaust is established, a beatification is inopportune and premature," World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder said in a statement.

"While it is entirely a matter for the Catholic Church to decide on whom religious honors are bestowed, there are strong concerns about Pope Pius XII's political role during World War II which should not be ignored."

Paddy Agnew describes the contoversy for The Irish Times: "For most of the last 60 years, many Jewish groups have argued that Pius, who was pope from 1939 to 1958, was guilty not only of not publicly condemning Hitler’s Nazi-Fascist regime but also of doing little or nothing to prevent the death of an estimated six million Jews in the Holocaust."

The Jerusalem Post sums up the position of the pontiff's defenders: "Vatican authorities, along with some Catholic and Jewish scholars, have claimed that precisely through his silence, Pius XII was able to work quietly to rescue as many Jews as possible. While he never publicly condemned the Nazi persecutions, many Catholic institutions, and many individual priests and nuns, opened their doors at personal risk to save Jewish lives. Doubtless, the pope was informed of this; the as yet unanswered question is whether he had given orders for this activity."

Agnew rounds up more reaction:

Pope Benedict’s announcement prompted immediate criticism from the worldwide Jewish community. In Italy, the president of the Association of Italian Rabbis, Giuseppe Laras, said the decision “is a sad one because I cannot help but think of what happened during the Shoah. The figure of this pope is a controversial one because he did not shout out loud his outrage and his opposition to the Shoah and against the extermination of people whose only crime was that of being Jewish.”

In a joint note, three other senior figures in the Italian Jewish community, Riccardo Di Segni, Renzo Gattegna and Riccardo Pacifici argued the decision might be premature, since a joint Vatican-Jewish Commission of historians was still considering Pope Pius’s record, adding: “The joint commission ... still has to get full access to the archives. Let us not forget the deportation of Jews from Italy, in particular train 1021 on October 16th, 1943, which took Italian Jews to Auschwitz from Rome, in face of the silence of Pius XII."

Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League in the US said: “We are saddened . . . that the pontiff would feel compelled to fast-track pope Pius at a point where the issue of the record – the history and the coming to a judgment – is still wide open.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

Days before Christmas, archaeologists on Monday unveiled what they said were the remains of the first dwelling in Nazareth that can be dated back to the time of Jesus, the Associated Press is reporting. The find could shed new light on what the hamlet was like during the period the New Testament says Jesus lived there as a boy.

he dwelling and older discoveries of nearby tombs in burial caves suggest that Nazareth, in what is now the State of Israel, was an out-of-the-way hamlet of around 50 houses on a patch of about four acres. It was evidently populated by Jews of modest means who kept camouflaged grottos to hide from Roman invaders, archaeologist Yardena Alexandre, excavations director at the Israel Antiquities Authority, told the AP.

Based on clay and chalk shards found at the site, the dwelling appeared to house a "simple Jewish family," Alexandre said, as workers at the site carefully chipped away at mud with small pickaxes to reveal stone walls.

Nazareth holds a cherished place in Christianity. It is believed to be the town where Christian tradition says Jesus grew up and where an angel told Mary she would bear the child of God.

"This may well have been a place that Jesus and his contemporaries were familiar with," Alexandre said. A young Jesus may have played around the house with his cousins and friends, she said. "It's a logical suggestion."

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Polish police found the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign that was stolen from the gate of the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz after an intensive three-day hunt and arrested five suspects, police told the Associated Press early Monday. The sign was found cut into three pieces.

Police spokeswoman Katarzyna Padlo said the sign was found Sunday night in northern Poland, the other end of the country from the southern Polish town where the Auschwitz memorial museum is located and where it disappeared before dawn Friday.

Padlo said police detained five men between the ages of 25 and 39 and took them for questioning to Krakow, which is the regional command of the area that includes the Auschwitz museum.

Another police spokesman, Dariusz Nowak, said the 16-foot sign, made of hollow steel, was found cut into three pieces, each containing one of the words. The cruelly ironic phrase means "Work Sets You Free" and ran completely counter to the purpose of Auschwitz, which began as a concentration camp for political prisoners during the Nazi occupation of Poland and evolved into an extermination camp where Jews were gassed to death in factory-like fashion.

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Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien, spiritual leader of the area's half million Catholics, is reminding residents of the Archdiocese of Baltimore that Church law excuses them from fulfilling the Sunday obligation to attend Mass due to a "grave cause," such as unsafe travel due to severe weather conditions.

The archdiocese is encouraging those who cannot safely attend Mass to listen to the Sunday Radio Mass at 9:30 on WBAL-AM (1090) am or watch the Mass on EWTN. More information is available at ewtn.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (60)
        

Pope Benedict XVI has moved Pope John Paul II one step closer to possible beatification, the milestone before sainthood, the Associated Press reports from the Vatican.

Benedict on Saturday approved a decree attesting to John Paul's heroic virtues, the AP reports. Benedict still must sign off on a miracle attributed to John Paul's intercession before the late pope can be beatified. There are several possible candidates, most prominently a French nun who says she was cured of Parkinson's disease with the help of the late pontiff.

Benedict put his predecessor on the fast track for sainthood just weeks after his April 2, 2005 death, waiving the customary five-year waiting period and allowing the investigation into John Paul's virtues to begin immediately.

More controversially, Benedict also approved a decree on the heroic virtues of Pope Pius XII, despite opposition from Jews who say the World War II-era pope didn't do enough to stop the Holocaust.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Lawmakers in Spain have voted to ease the tradtionally Roman Catholic country's abortion law, the Associated Press reports, approving a bill to allow the procedure without restrictions up to 14 weeks.

After the vote Thursday by the Congress of Deputies, the measure goes to the Senate, which is expected to approve it next year. The legislation would move the country closer to its more secular neighbors in the European Union.

From the Associated Press story:

Abortion reform was the last major pending issue in a bold reform agenda undertaken by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a Socialist who took power in 2004. Under Zapatero, Spain has also legalized gay marriage and made it easier for Spaniards to divorce in a drive that has infuriated conservatives and the Roman Catholic Church.

Under the current law, which dates back to 1985, Spanish women could in theory go to jail for getting an abortion outside certain strict limits — up to week 12 in case of rape and week 22 if the fetus is malformed.

But abortion is in effect widely available because women can assert mental distress as sole grounds for having an abortion, regardless of how late the pregnancy is. Most of the more than 100,000 abortions carried out each year in Spain were early-term ones that fell under this category.

The bill approved Thursday wipes away the threat of imprisonment and declares abortion to be a woman's right.

"We are legislating women's right to decide whether to be mothers," said Carmen Monton, the Socialists' spokeswoman on gender issues.

Conservative Popular Party spokesman Santiago Cervera insisted there was no clamor in Spanish society for changing the existing law and the government instigated it just to raise a stir and distract people's attention away from the country's economic recession.

Anti-abortion demonstrators wearing sandwich boards rallied outside the legislature during debate on the bill. One of the boards showed a picture of a child with Down syndrome asking Zapatero "why are you letting them kill me?"

Read the Associated Press story.

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A risqué billboard outside a progressive Anglican Church is causing outrage in New Zealand, The Times of London reports.

The advertisement shows an apparently post-coital Mary and Joseph in bed, Mary looking disappointed and Joseph looking dejected. The copy reads: "Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow."

The vicar of Auckland's St. Matthew-in-the-City Church tells The Times that the image was intended to challenge literal interpretations of the Bible.

“The idea was to lampoon and ridicule the idea of a male God in the sky who somehow impregnated Mary,” Archdeacon Glynn Cardy says. “We would question the virgin birth in any literal sense. We would question the maleness of God in any literal sense.”

The Roman Catholic diocese of Auckland is not amused. Spokeswoman Lyndsay Freer describes the image as disrespectful, offensive, and also inaccurate.

“Our Christian tradition of 2,000 years is that Mary remains a virgin,” she tells The Times.

Read the story at timesonline.co.uk.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)
        

The Nazis' infamous iron sign declaring "Arbeit Macht Frei" — German for "Work Sets You Free" — was stolen Friday from the entrance of the former Auschwitz death camp, the Associated Press reports.

The 16-foot-long, 90-lb. iron sign at the Holocaust memorial site in southern Poland was unscrewed on one side and torn off on the other, police spokeswoman Katarzyna Padlo said.

The theft from the entrance to the camp -- where more than 1 million people, mostly Jews, died during World War II -- brought immediate condemnation worldwide.

"The theft of such a symbolic object is an attack on the memory of the Holocaust, and an escalation from those elements that would like to return us to darker days," Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said in a statement from Jerusalem.

"I call on all enlightened forces in the world who fight against anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia and the hatred of the other, to join together to combat these trends."

AP photo

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The Vatican moved Thursday to thwart renegade African Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo from ordaining more bishops in defiance of the pope, stripping him of his priestly functions so any future ordinations by him would be invalid, the Associated Press reports.

The Zambian monsignor has long been a problem for Rome, AP Vatican reporter Frances d'Emilio writes. Milingo angered the Vatican when he was married in 2001 to a South Korean woman by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church.

He was excommunicated in 2006 after installing four married men as bishops in defiance of the Roman Catholic Church requirement that its clergy be celibate. But despite that harsh punishment by the Vatican, Milingo, now 79, kept ordaining new bishops.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told reporters Thursday he was unsure just how many bishops, although it appeared about three men were elevated to bishop's rank recently by the African churchman.

Another Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said although Milingo was excommunicated, any ordinations he performed were "illicit but valid" because he hadn't lost his priestly functions.

That meant if the ordinations continued, and the illicitly ordained bishops in turn began ordaining more bishops, the Vatican would run the risk of seeing Milingo's followers, who advocate abolishing clergy celibacy, set up a church outside the Roman Catholic church.

The African had a strong following in a church near Rome because of his reputation as an exorcist and healer. Catholic officials accused him of promoting African indigenous beliefs by performing mass exorcisms and healing ceremonies.

"Sadly, Archbishop Milingo has shown no signs of the desired repentance with a view to returning to full communion with the Supreme Pontiff and other members of the College of Bishops," the Vatican said in a statement.

AP photo

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Shaukat Malik is a Muslim-American Certified Public Accountant from Potomac. He left his native Pakistan in 1972 and has been living in the United States since 1980.

Gamal al Banna, a brother of the founder of Egypt’s Ikhwan al Muslimun -- the Muslim Brotherhood -- says “the veil is not an Islamic tradition, but a pre-Islamic one, when Arab women covered their heads and left the upper parts of their chest uncovered.” He thinks the relevant Quranic verse commands women to cover their chests, not necessarily their heads.

Unfortantely, the Arab world has gone where the Saudi conservatives wanted it to go. Nasserism in Egypt was followed by veiled female students at Al Azhar University in Cairo demanding the imposition of Shariah, and soon there were youths belonging to Gamaa Islamiyya willing to thrash women who refused to veil themselves in public. When the Arabs came to Afghanistan in 1996 to fight for the Taliban, the call for “true Islam” was already a slogan that was heard loud and clear in Pakistan. Ironically, “true Islam” usually applies to women and had begun spreading with General Zia’s Hudood Ordinance, ordaining that women anchors and announcers on PTV cover their heads. But the ulema on the right of Zia wanted more. In fact they wanted nothing short of a “shuttlecock”, a brutally punitive covering that renders women half blind.

Pakistan was reluctant to take the veil because of the embarrassing fact that Fatima Jinnah, sister of the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and Begum Liaquat Ali Khan were national icons without the veil. But the order of the Taliban affected many parts of the country nonetheless. After a few incidents on The Mall in Lahore, religious seminarians found that it was no use threatening Pakistani women to take the veil if the government was not willing and the Constitution allowed a woman to become head of government and state. But the environment was scary enough to force Benazir Bhutto to start fingering beads in public and Hasina Wajid of Bangladesh to wear a pious head-band. The Taliban whipped unveiled women in Kabul, but could not do so in Mazar-e-Sharif. When foreign-inspired Islamists began beating up unveiled women in the Ferghana Valley in Central Asia, no one really took them seriously. Neither Bangladesh nor Indonesia could have dreamed 20 years ago that there would be violence against unveiled women. Funnily, today the Pattani Muslims of southern Thailand -- “revived” after their leader paid a visit to Saudi Arabia -- proudly display prescriptive photos of a complete head-to-foot covering for women in a climate that is sure to suffocate them to death.

Bengali Muslim women complain that Bangladesh is falling under the interpretation by Maulana Maududi of a Quranic edict of the strict veil that was actually meant only for the wives of the Prophet (peace be upon him), and that too in a specific case. To impose the veil, a country needs theocratic rule, but theocracy doesn’t tend to last, as happened in Afghanistan. In Iran, where it survives, an imposed veil awaits the day of release. In Turkey, which punishes women who take the veil, at least one Islamic party went around illegally punishing unveiled women in cities where it had won the local elections. But today the Islamic party in government wants to join Europe where France disallows the veil as part of its cultural policy. If Turkey joins the European Union, the Shariah will go, together with the veil and an interfering army!

By choosing the veil as a battlefront, the clergy has made a fatal mistake in the Islamic world. This is a battle it can never win because no one agrees on the nature of the veil prescribed by Islam.

AP photo

To wear the Hijab is certainly NOT an Islamic obligation on women. It is an innovation of men suffering from a piety complex who are so weak spiritually that they just cannot trust themselves! The prophet had instructed Muslim women to use the extra cloth in their headscarves to cover their breasts. Nowhere was their any instruction to cover your face like Darth Vader.

Muslim men have cleverly exploited their interpretation of Sharia laws to limit a women’s role in Muslim countries. Laws of Hadood, the Islamic marriage contract, plus legalized polygamy, all lead to treating women as if they were living in Arabia 1,400 years ago, and had no idea about today’s world. A women believing in these interpretations will fall victim to these relgious predators and end up wearing a hijab, when all she needs to do is to dress modestly.

The hijab or burqa are not required by Islam. The only requirement is to dress modestly. Today in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East, Iran, Somalia, Afghanistan, Turkey and throughout the world, most Muslim women have no choice but to wear the hijab or burqa with only thier eyes showing due to cultural and Man-made traditions.

Now, covering one’s head as is done even amongst Orthodox Jews and women in India and Pakistan that still allows them to participate in all activities is not at issue here.

It is the total hijab and burqa as worn by many Muslim women in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere that clearly isolates them from society while also violating their rights. Essentially her divine right to breath normally and not be forced to inhale her own exhaled air, the right to work in the same environment as men, the right to run a business or pursue any profession she is qualified to pursue, the right to travel alone, the right to participate in a sport of her liking, or just exercise.

The object of the hijab and burqa is essentially to control women. This idea may have worked in medieval times. However, in today’s world, where contribution by both sexes is essential, it ends up violating a woman’s rights.

Morality of the self and cleanliness of conscience are far better than the morality of the hijab/veil/burqa. No goodness can come from pretence. Imposing the hijab on women is the ultimate proof that men suspect their mothers, daughters, wives and sisters of being potential traitors to them. How can Muslim men meet non-Muslim women who are not veiled and treat them respectfully, but not accord the same respectful treatment to Muslim women? This confirms the hypocrisy of Muslim male behavior reinforced by culture and selfish traditions.

I am reproducing for you translations by three renowned translators of verses in the Quran that make reference towards Hijab/covering one’s body.

These verses must be read and their meaning interpreted in the context of Arabia 1,400 years ago, when the holy prophet was alive. This was a time when girls were buried at birth and the outside world was very dangerous for a woman venturing out.

033.059

YUSUFALI: O Prophet! Tell thy wives and daughters, and the believing women, that they should cast their outer garments over their persons (when abroad): that is most convenient, that they should be known (as such) and not molested. And Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.

PICKTHAL: O Prophet! Tell thy wives and thy daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks close round them (when they go abroad). That will be better, so that they may be recognized and not annoyed. Allah is ever Forgiving, Merciful.

SHAKIR: O Prophet! Say to your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers that they let down upon them their over-garments; this will be more proper, that they may be known, and thus they will not be given trouble; and Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

24.060

YUSUFALI: Such elderly women as are past the prospect of marriage,-- there is no blame on them if they lay aside their (outer) garments, provided they make not a wanton display of their beauty: but it is best for them to be modest: and Allah is One Who sees and knows all things.

PICKTHAL: As for women past childbearing, who have no hope of marriage, it is no sin for them if they discard their (outer) clothing in such a way as not to show adornment. But to refrain is better for them. Allah is Hearer, Knower.

SHAKIR: And (as for) women advanced in years who do not hope for a marriage, it is no sin for them if they put off their clothes without displaying their ornaments; and if they restrain themselves it is better for them; and Allah is Hearing, Knowing.

Verse 33. 59 of Surah Al-Ahzaab reads: "O Prophet! Tell thy wives and daughters and the believing women, that they should cast their outer garments over their persons (when outside): so that they should be known (as such) and not molested."

According to the Quran, the reason why Muslim women should wear an outer garment when going out of their homes is that they may be recognized as "Believing" women and differentiated from streetwalkers for whom sexual harassment is an occupational hazard. The purpose of this verse was not to confine women to their homes, but to make it safe for them to go about their daily business without attracting unsavory attention.

Verse 24.60 refers to Older Muslim women who are past the prospect of marriage are not required to wear "the outer garment." "Such elderly women as are past the prospect of marriage, there is no blame on them if they lay aside their (outer) garments, provided they make not wanton display of their beauty; but it is best for them to be modest; and Allah is One Who sees and knows all things."

The Quran does not suggest that women should be veiled or they should be kept apart from the world of men. On the contrary, the Quran is insistent on the full participation of women in society and in the religious practices. I think Western culture has embraced the essence of the message in the Quran by according equal status to women in all matters legal and social.

Muslim women remained in mixed company with men until the late sixth century A.H. (11th century A.D.). They received guests, held meetings and went to wars to help their brothers and husbands, and they defended their castles and bastions. It is ironical to note that a Muslim women’s counterpart in Europe had none of these rights. She was part of her husband’s estate to be passed on to his heirs on his death. Similarly a Hindu woman was also considered mortally tied to her husband and was burnt alive with him in the funeral fire on the pretext of religious tradition. This practice referred to as “Sati” was mainly practiced to usurp her property rights and thankfully was abolished by the British in the 19th century.

Muslim Women living in Western Countries

Partly as a reaction to racial profiling and prejudice in the western world, especially after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the resurgence of the Taliban and their own version of made-up Islam, and reinforced by referenda on minarets and public condemnation of Islam by leaders of democracies sworn to freedom of religion and free speech, some young men and women who were born in the West to Muslim families feel that they no longer wish to identify with the West, and that reaffirmation of their identity as Muslims requires the kind of visible sign that adoption of conservative clothing implies. For these women, the issue is not that they have to dress conservatively, but that they choose to. Some of these women will wear a total burqa with only their eyes showing. They indeed resemble the infamous throat-slitters seen on television murdering captives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Although, Western constitutions guarantee freedom of religion, displays of religiosity by wearing the Jewish yarmulke, or the Christian cross is not encouraged.

However, a full burqa will have the exact opposite effect on the majority population. Unlike Pakistan or India, where every woman is subjected to an “eye-exam”, in the West people are not really bothered, unless someone is wearing very little clothing. A Muslim woman by covering her head amd dressing up in loose fitting clothes will hardly be noticed and can go about her business.

Unfortunately, the hijab covering the face, with each breath visible with the movement of the area covering the mouth, bears a close resemblance to the Darth Vader character of the Star Wars films. It draws unwanted attention and ignites the hatred of bigots.

In the United States, under civil liberties guaranteed by the separation of church and state, wearing a hijab is a woman’s choice. But why stand out in a safe society?

You do not suddenly acquire good morals by putting on a hijab. Your environment and where you live and work more or less dictates how you dress. Muslim women in the West who wear a hijab, especially of the type worn by Darth Vader, are incorrectly and criminally identifying Islam with this crazy outfit. They are dragging Islam into the gutter of hatred. As if the throat-cutting Taliban and Lal Masjid-type mullahs have not done enough damage already. Videos of Muslim men shouting, “God is great and beheading innocent people, show them wearing the hijab mask where only their eyes are showing. What nonsense! Do we want to project Islam as a religion where the women must hide or is a source of evil that must be enclosed inside a garment, just because Muslim men are sexually out of control?

Muslim women living in Muslim countries

For years, most progressive Muslim scholars have accused traditional and literalist interpretations of the faith on this issue. They practically propagate that it is women who alone are responsible for the lack of moral probity and modesty in society, and not men’s obsession with sex.

There have been cases in various Muslim countries where men after assaulting or raping a woman said that they did so because "she was asking for it," meaning that not observing the veil amounted to an invitation to abuse. Such thinking unfortunately is not uncommon amongst many men in Muslim countries. While we busy ourselves in discussing the veil issue in western counties like France and secular Muslim republics like Turkey, bemoaning the discrimination faced by Muslim women there who observe the veil, we conveniently forget that in most Muslim countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and increasingly, Pakistan, women who believe that modest dressing can be demonstrated without observing hijab are coming under pressure.

Much of this pressure, of course, is coming from men -- most of whom blame an unveiled woman for their own sinful thoughts. Yet unveiled women also face a telling pressure from the ever-increasing numbers of veiled women. This begs the question: is it really liberation that a woman feels behind a veil, or is this liberation only about freeing oneself from the thought of ever daring to challenge male-dominated interpretations of exactly how a Muslim woman should dress and behave?

It is time Muslim women stood up for their rights and refuse to wear the burqa. We can make a start in Afghanistan by teaching Afghan men to allow their women to go out without the suffocating "tent burqa” they must wear when they go out.

Many women in the tent camps of Pakistan were forced to remain inside these canvas ovens during the military offensive in Swat during the summer of 2009. Many women suffered from serious skin rashes and poor lungs because of not being able to inhale fresh air and being forced to remain inside all day in their tent jail.

We must enlighten Muslim men to be more accepting of women in the marketplace and place of work and not just think of them as a sex objects persons who are inferior and must be subdued and shown their lower status. Cultural traditions rooted in illiteracy and folklore must be uprooted and replaced by reason and enlightenment. The clergy in Afghanistan and the frontier regions of Pakistan must be re-educated to teach them the correct status of women in the holy Quran and also what women have accomplished elsewhere in today’s world in almost every field of endeavor.

Female U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan can play a very important role in this regard by gaining access to Afghan households in villages where they are stationed and engaging and teaching the Afghan women about their rights. They should also engage the Afghan men by sharing with them their role as combat soldiers. If nothing else, it can be hoped that this will make the Afghan think.

In conclusion, in a free society we are free to wear what we like, as long as we are cognizant of its effect on society and what message we are giving.

Muslim women should focus more on their personal and intellectual development so they are better able to cope with today’s competitive world as opposed to isolating themselves behind the hijab shield.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)
        

Pope Benedict XVI is just days away from declaring Pope John Paul II “venerable,” according to multiple media reports on Thursday, moving the later pontiff a step closer to sainthood.

Romereports.com says the declaration is expected on Saturday. The Italian magazine Panorama says a beatification ceremony has been scheduled for Oct. 16, 2010 in Rome, which would be the 32nd anniversary of the election of then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyla to the papacy. Beatification is the last stage before canonization to sainthood.

Before John Paul II may be beatified, Benedict must confirm his “heroic virtues,” and a miracle must be attributed to his intercession.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints agreed last month to approve John Paul’s heroic virtues. Since John Paul’s death, many have said his intercession led to miracle cures, most prominently a French nun who says she was cured of Parkinson’s disease.

As Agence France-Presse writes, the path to sainthood typically takes decades at least, and often centuries. If John Paul is beatified in October next year, just five years after his death, he will have progressed more quickly than Mother Teresa.

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Newly released government papers show homeland security officials improperly gathered intelligence on the Nation of Islam, the Associated Press reports.

Internal correspondence shows the 2007 report -- titled "Nation of Islam: Uncertain Leadership Succession Poses Risks" -- was by an intelligence group working within the Department of Homeland Security, according to the AP.

Hours after the report was issued internally, officials recalled it, deciding the report violated intelligence rules against collecting or disseminating information on U.S. citizens.

One official wrote at the time that the group uses extreme rhetoric but had not engaged in or advocated violence and should not have been the subject of intelligence gathering. The documents were released Wednesday as part of a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

A fire Wednesday morning destroyed the parish center at Holy Spirit Church in the Joppa-Magnolia area of Harford County, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Baltimore said.

Several elderly women were at the parish center, which is a separate building from the church, when the fire started at around 11:30 a.m., spokesman Sean Caine said. No injuries were reported.

Fire officials were investigating the cause. The Associated Press reported damages at $3.5 million.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien visited the scene and met with the Holy Spirit Pastor Joe Simmons, Caine said. Several area clergy also came to offer support.

The parish of 570 families was formed in 1963.

Associated Press photo

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

With 89 percent of the population religious and 62 percent highly so, the United States is the most religious nation in the industrialized world, according to an international survey released this week.

Religiosity remains high among all adult age groups, according to the Bertelsmann Foundation's Religion Monitor, and large majorities of Catholics and Protestants say that their religious beliefs affect their political views.

In comparison, faith plays a far less significant role in developed European countries such as Britain, France and Germany.

The Religion Monitor asked 21,000 people in 21 countries nearly 100 questions about their interest in religious topics, belief in God or the divine, public and private religious practices, religious experiences and the relevance of religion to their everyday lives. The answers were used to classify individuals as highly religious, religious or non-religious.

(Internet users may complete the questionnaire at religionmonitor.com to identify their own "religiosity profile" and see how they compare with others from their country.)

Dr. Martin Rieger, director of the Religion Monitor, said the results contradict the view that the world is becoming increasingly secular.

“The United States demonstrates that the role of religion does not necessarily decline even when countries have achieved considerable economic, social and cultural progress,” he said in a statement.

Reiger attributed the gap between American and European religiosity to historical differences: “The Enlightenment in young, free America included a vigorous religious vision. In Europe, which was shaped by clerical feudalism, the Enlightenment came only after a struggle against the institutional church.”

The survey found that 85 percent of Americans believe in God and life after death, 80 percent pray regularly, and 75 percent attend religious services or visit a place of worship, with half going at least once a week.

In contrast, 48 percent of Britons, 46 percent of Frenchmen and 28 percent of Germans and Austrians are non-religious. Among European nations, only strongly Catholic Poland and Italy are as religious as the United States. Globally, American religiosity ranks between that of Europe’s industrialized countries and that of developing countries such as Brazil, Guatemala and Nigeria.

American religiosity is also unique in its vitality among all age groups, according to the survey. Eighty-nine percent of Americans 18- to 29-year-olds are religious or highly religious, and levels of belief remain high among older cohorts: 89 percent of those in their 30s, 88 percent of those in their 40s, 93 percent of those in their 50s and 90 percent of those 60 and older are religious or highly religious.

In Europe, in contrast, religiosity declines from one generation to the next.

Religious convictions also play a significant role in Americans’ political views, according to the survey. Seventy-six percent of American Protestants, including evangelicals, charismatics and Pentecostals, and 65 percent of Catholics say that their religious beliefs moderately or substantially affect their political views.

In Europe, only 27 percent of respondents report that religion plays a role in their political decisions, and just 12 percent say they are strongly influenced in this regard by their religious convictions.

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Congregation Beth Simchat Torah of New York, which bills itself as the world's largest synagogue for people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, announced on Tuesday that its Senior Rabbi, Sharon Kleinbaum, had accepted an invitation from President and Mrs. Obama to attend the White House Hanukkah reception on Wednesday.

"I am delighted to represent the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and queer communities at the White House in celebrating this holiday of freedom and liberation with President and Mrs. Obama,” Kleinbaum said in a statement. "The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community knows what it is to fight for equality and freedom and we are looking to President Obama to exercise leadership in this struggle. I am honored to be included and look forward to inviting the President and Mrs. Obama to CBST.”

In a release, Congregation Beth Simchat Torah said it is “committed to the idea that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Jews are wholly legitimate members of the Jewish people, are equally legitimate members of civil society, and have a unique and essential contribution to make to the life of Judaism and society. It is this commitment to social justice and gender equality that has also attracted straight and even non-Jewish adults to our community.”

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A Massachusetts school district late Tuesday denied a father's claims that his son was suspended for drawing a stick figure of Jesus on a cross, the Associated Press is reporting.

The Taunton School District said in a written statement that the second-grade student was never suspended over the sketch and that a drawing circulated to reporters by the boy's father, Chester Johnson, is not the same one that was discovered by the teacher earlier this month, the AP reports.

The district also denied the father's claims that the boy and his classmates were assigned by a teacher to draw something that reminded them of the holiday season.

Johnson did not return multiple phone messages from The Associated Press on Tuesday night about the school district's statements.

The original post follows:

An 8-year-old Massachusetts boy was sent home from school and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation after he was asked to make a Christmas drawing and sketched what appeared to be a stick figure of Jesus on a cross, the Associated Press is reporting.

Chester Johnson of Taunton, Mass., said his son made the drawing on Dec. 2 after his second-grade teacher asked children to sketch something that reminded them of the holiday, according to the AP. The assignment came just days after the family had visited the holiday lights display at the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette in Attleboro, Mass., where Johnson said his son seemed taken with the religious statues he saw there.

"When he seen the crucifixion of Jesus on the cross, that's what he drew," Johnson told the AP. "He liked that. That drew his eye."

Johnson, who works at the school as a janitor on a per diem basis, said administrators were concerned the boy drew Xs for Jesus' eyes, and particularly worried when his son said he'd drawn himself on the cross after officials pressed him about who he'd drawn.

Johnson said his son might have been worried about getting in trouble if he said he drew Jesus. "If he said it was him, it was more like a cartoon," Johnson said.

Superintendent Julie Hackett said she could not discuss an individual student and did not address the drawing specifically or the teacher's reaction to it, but did say the school has safety protocols in place that were followed.

Hackett did not return multiple calls from The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Read the rest of the Associated Press story.

AP photo

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Pioneering televangelist Oral Roberts died on Tuesday. He was 91.

"Oral Roberts was the greatest man of God I’ve ever known," his son Richard told KTUL-TV in Tulsa, Okla., where Roberts founded Oral Roberts University in 1963 and the City of Faith Medical and Research Center in 1981. “A modern-day apostle of the healing ministry, an author, educator, evangelist, prophet, and innovator, he was the only man of his generation to build a worldwide ministry, an accredited university, and a medical school."

Having started his career as a faith healer, the Pentecostal and charismatic Christian was known to the broader public for his prophecies and visions, and particularly for an unorthodox fundraising pitch in 1987, when he told a television audience that God would call him home if his audience did not pony up $8 million.

Following is a report from the Associated Press:

Oral Roberts, the evangelist who rose from humble tent revivals to found a multimillion-dollar ministry and a university bearing his name, died Tuesday. He was 91.

Roberts died of complications from pneumonia in Newport Beach, Calif., according to his spokesman, A. Larry Ross. The evangelist was hospitalized after a fall on Saturday. He had survived two heart attacks in the 1990s and a broken hip in 2006.

Roberts was a pioneer on two fronts — he helped bring spirit-filled charismatic Christianity into the mainstream and took his trademark revivals to television, a new frontier for religion.

Roberts overcame tuberculosis at age 17, and credited that triumph with leading him to become one of the country's most famous ministers.

He gave up a local pastorate in Enid in 1947 to enter an evangelistic ministry in Tulsa to pray for the healing of the whole person — the body, mind and spirit. The philosophy led many to call him a "faith healer," a label he rejected with the comment: "God heals — I don't."

By the 1960s and '70s, he was reaching millions around the world through radio, television, publications and personal appearances. He remained on TV into the new century, co-hosting the program, "Miracles Now," with son Richard. He published dozens of books and conducted hundreds of crusades. A famous photograph showed him working at a desk with a sign on it reading, "Make no little plans here."

He credited his oratorical skills to his faith, saying, "I become anointed with God's word, and the spirit of the Lord builds up in me like a coiled spring. By the time I'm ready to go on, my mind is razor-sharp. I know exactly what I'm going to say and I'm feeling like a lion."

Unity of body, mind and spirit became the theme of Oral Roberts University. The campus is a Tulsa landmark, with its space-age buildings laden with gold paint, including a 200-foot prayer tower and a 60-foot bronze statue of praying hands.

His ministry hit upon rocky times in the 1980s. There was controversy over his City of Faith medical center, a $250 million investment that eventually folded, and Roberts' widely ridiculed proclamation that God would "call me home" if he failed to meet a fundraising goal of $8 million. A law school he founded also was shuttered.

Semiretired in recent years and living in California, he returned to Tulsa, Okla., in October 2007 as scandal roiled Oral Roberts University. His son, Richard Roberts, who succeeded him as ORU president, faced allegations of spending university money on shopping sprees and other luxuries at a time the institution was more than $50 million in debt.

Richard Roberts resigned as president in November 2007, marking the first time since Oral Roberts University was chartered in 1963 that a member of the Roberts family would not be at its helm. The rocky period for the evangelical school was eased by billionaire Oklahoma City businessman Mart Green donated $70 million and helped run the school in the interim, pledging to restore the public's trust. By the fall of 2009, things were looking up, with officials saying tens of millions of dollars worth of debt had been paid off and enrollment was up slightly.

That September, a frail-looking Oral Roberts attended the ceremony when the school's new president, Mark Rutland, was formally inaugurated.

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As talks continue in Copenhagen to address climate change, Pope Benedict XVI urged action "in the face of signs of a growing crisis which it would be irresponsible not to take seriously."

The title of his message for the World Day of Peace – “If you want to cultivate peace, protect creation” – echoes the peace day message of his predecessor, Pope Paul VI: “If you want justice, work for peace.”

“Can we remain indifferent,” Benedict asks, “before the problems associated with such realities as climate change, desertification, the deterioration and loss of productivity in vast agricultural areas, the pollution of rivers and aquifers, the loss of biodiversity, the increase of natural catastrophes and the deforestation of equatorial and tropical regions? Can we disregard the growing phenomenon of ‘environmental refugees,’ people who are forced by the degradation of their natural habitat to forsake it – and often their possessions as well – in order to face the dangers and uncertainties of forced displacement? Can we remain impassive in the face of actual and potential conflicts involving access to natural resources?”

The World Day of Peace is observed Jan. 1, but the Vatican released the message on Tuesday.

In it, Benedict refrains from “entering into the merit of specific technical solutions,” but says “the Church is nonetheless concerned, as an ‘expert in humanity,’ to call attention to the relationship between the Creator, human beings and the created order.”

“Respect for creation is of immense consequence," he writes, "not least because ‘creation is the beginning and the foundation of all God’s works,’ and its preservation has now become essential for the pacific coexistence of mankind. Man’s inhumanity to man has given rise to numerous threats to peace and to authentic and integral human development – wars, international and regional conflicts, acts of terrorism, and violations of human rights. Yet no less troubling are the threats arising from the neglect – if not downright misuse – of the earth and the natural goods that God has given us. For this reason, it is imperative that mankind renew and strengthen ‘that covenant between human beings and the environment, which should mirror the creative love of God, from whom we come and towards whom we are journeying.’ ”

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With the Senate working on the healthcare overhaul, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin enlisted a group of liberal faith leaders Tuesday to discuss what he called the “moral imperative” of providing coverage to every American.

“We are fortunate to live in the wealthiest nation in the world that has been a beacon of hope and human rights for millions,” the Maryland Democrat said. “Our objective in health care reform is to bring down escalating costs; provide affordable, quality health care for every American; and to do so in a fiscally responsible way. But America is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not provide health care to its citizens. The leader of the free world should provide universal health coverage to every American. This is a moral imperative and that’s what this bill does.”

“Our traditions demand better,” said Rabbi Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism. “Our nation seeks better. God's children deserve better. This Congress can do better. Dr. King’s call of the fierce urgency of now should animate the decisions each senator will make in ensuring universal health coverage. We pray and advocate that they will do better – for all Americans and for our nation’s future.”

“Authentic health care reform has been delayed by insurance companies seeking to protect vast profits and grotesquely inflated executive salaries,” said James Winkler, General Secretary of United Methodist Church. “Health care is a human right. It cannot and should not be denied in favor of profit. Now is the moment of decision. Now is the time for moral courage in the face of money and power.”

“We call on our representatives solve the immoral situation in our country where people go without health insurance,” said Sister Simone Campbell, Executive Director of NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby. “This is a faith and civic challenge: we need accessible, quality, affordable healthcare for all.”

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A top Israeli rabbi invoked the Holocaust on Monday as he deplored an arson attack against a mosque in the occupied West Bank blamed on hardline Jewish settlers, Agence France-Presse reports.

"Seventy years ago, the Holocaust, the biggest tragedy of our history, began with the torchings of synagogues during Kristallnacht," Yona Metzger, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, said as he stood in front of the mosque in this village in the northern West Bank.

Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, was the 1938 pogrom during which Germans ransacked synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses.

Metzger had come to Yasuf to protest against the vandalism of the village mosque on Friday, when assailants, suspected to be hardline settlers angry over a temporary moratorium on settlement construction, sprayed hate messages in Hebrew and burned Korans, AFP reports.

He expressed hope that his visit would help to ease tensions. But as he spoke, protected by Palestinian police forces, AFP reports, dozens of protesters blocked the entrance to the mosque, chanting "No peace with settlements."

Read the rest of the story by Agence France-Presse.

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Conservatives in Asheville, N.C., are looking to use a mostly forgotten clause in the state’s constitution that blocks those who “deny the being of Almighty God” from public office to oust an atheist from the city council.

Alysia Patterson of the Associated Press has turned a fine story:

Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell believes in ending the death penalty, conserving water and reforming government — but he doesn't believe in God. His political opponents say that's a sin that makes him unworthy of serving in office, and they've got the North Carolina Constitution on their side.

Bothwell's detractors are threatening to take the city to court for swearing him in, even though the state's antiquated requirement that officeholders believe in God is unenforceable because it violates the U.S. Consititution.

"The question of whether or not God exists is not particularly interesting to me and it's certainly not relevant to public office," the recently elected 59-year-old said.

Bothwell ran this fall on a platform that also included limiting the height of downtown buildings and saving trees in the city's core, views that appealed to voters in the liberal-leaning community at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. When Bothwell was sworn into office on Monday, he used an alternative oath that doesn't require officials to swear on a Bible or reference "Almighty God."

That has riled conservative activists, who cite a little-noticed quirk in North Carolina's Constitution that disqualifies officeholders "who shall deny the being of Almighty God." The provision was included when the document was drafted in 1868 and wasn't revised when North Carolina amended its constitution in 1971. One foe, H.K. Edgerton, is threatening to file a lawsuit in state court against the city to challenge Bothwell's appointment.

"My father was a Baptist minister. I'm a Christian man. I have problems with people who don't believe in God," said Edgerton, a former local NAACP president and founder of Southern Heritage 411, an organization that promotes the interests of black southerners.

As Patterson notes, the North Carolina provision is unenforceable, owing to the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution. In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed that federal law prohibits states from requiring any kind of religious test to serve in office when it ruled in favor of a Maryland atheist seeking appointment as a notary public.

Seven states, Maryland among them, still have provisions barring atheist officeholders.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
        

Dozens of people led by an Orthodox priest smashed a menorah in Moldova's capital on Sunday, using hammers and iron bars to remove the candelabra during Hanukkah, the Associated Press reports.

The five-foot-tall ceremonial candelabrum was retrieved, reinstalled and is now under police guard, according to the AP.

Police said they were investigating the Sunday attack but there was no official reaction from Moldova's Orthodox Church, which is part of the Russian Orthodox Church and counts 70 percent of Moldovans as members.

The Jewish community was thriving before World War II but there are now estimated to be just 12,000 Jews in the former Soviet Republic. Twenty years ago there were 66,000 Jews. Many emigrated to Israel.

The national government said in a statement that "hatred, intolerance and xenophobia" are unacceptable. The U.S. Embassy and the Chisinau city government also condemned the attack. City officials called on the church to investigate.

Jewish leader Alexandr Bilinkis called on the Orthodox Church to take a position over the priest's actions. The head of the church, Bishop Vladimir Cantarean, was at his mother's funeral in Ukraine on Monday and was expected to make a statement when he returns, the church said.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Lawyers for the Roman Catholic Church have urged a court in Malaysia to let Christians use "Allah" as a translation for God and overturn a government ban that has become a symbol of religious grievances in the Muslim-majority nation, the Associated Press is reporting.

The High Court began hearing legal arguments Monday in the dispute, which began in late 2007 after the government blocked non-Muslims from translating God as "Allah" in their literature on the grounds that it would confuse Muslims.

Authorities have insisted that the name should be used exclusively by Muslims. The ban mainly affects the Malay-language edition of the Catholic Church's main publication in Malaysia, The Herald, which is read mostly by indigenous tribes who converted to Christianity decades ago.

"Our position has been made clear to the court," The Herald's editor, the Rev. Lawrence Andrew, told the AP. "The main thing is we've been using this word ... for a long time, for centuries."

But in recent years, authorities have seized some Malay-language Bibles that used "Allah."
We are reminded of reports a couple of years ago that a Catholic bishop in the Netherlands wanted Dutch Catholics to call God “Allah.”

Tiny Muskens, then the bishop of Breda, told a Dutch television station that using the name in church, as is common in many Muslim countries, would eventually promote rapprochement between Islam and Christianity.

"Someone like me has prayed to Allah yang maha kuasa [Almighty God] for eight years in Indonesia and other priests for 20 or 30 years,” he said. “In the heart of the Eucharist, God is called Allah over there, so why can't we start doing that together?"

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

A coalition of conservative Christian leaders is lobbying the House of Representatives to pass “tough sanctions” to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

"Now that supermajorities in the House and Senate have made their support for sanctions known, and now that the Iranian regime has made its increasing defiance clear to the world, the time for Congress to act has arrived," Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said in a statement.

The letter urges the House to pass sanctions on foreign companies that export refined petroleum products, including gasoline, to Iran; help maintain Iran’s domestic refining capacity; provide ships or shipping services to transport such products; underwrite those shipments to Iran; or finance or broker those shipments, and to consider “other, targeted sanctions as may be required to demonstrate our seriousness to the Iranian regime.”

“As the clock runs out, we must remember that Iran remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, is funding Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon and Gaza, has sought to destabilize democratic and Western-leaning regimes throughout the Middle East, is currently arresting and detaining political opponents, actively persecutes its Christian citizens, has shot protestors in cold blood in the streets, and its president has denied the Holocaust and vowed to wipe Israel off the face of the earth,” the letter concludes. “We speak out today on behalf of millions of Christians who believe that the interests of peace and security would best be served by our elected representatives sending a powerful signal that this tyrannical Iranian regime shall never threaten the world with nuclear weapons.”

Signers include Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship Ministries and BreakPoint, Pat Robertson of Christian Broadcasting Network, Richard Land of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, Gary Bauer of American Values, Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family, John Hagee of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, and Jordan Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice.

The letter follows, after the jump.

• Hon. Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House of Representatives

• Hon. John A. Boehner
House Minority Leader

• Hon. Howard L. Berman
Chairman, House Foreign Relations Committee

• Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
Ranking Member, House Foreign Relations Committee

December 10, 2009

Dear Member of Congress:

We write to you today as Christian leaders, deeply concerned about Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, and urge you to bring legislation to the floor of the House and Senate that will impose meaningful sanctions against the Iranian regime unless and until Iran abandons its efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

At the onset of his diplomatic effort with Iran this spring, President Obama said that "by the end of the year we should have some sense whether or not these discussions are starting to yield significant benefits,” and specifically held out the prospect of sanctions against Tehran "to ensure that Iran understands we are serious." That deadline is mere days away, and just as President Obama said, Tehran needs proof we are serious.

In a report issued November 26, the IAEA Director General reluctantly concluded that talks meant to steer Iran’s nuclear program away from weapons development had come to a dead end because Iran has repeatedly lied about the extent of its nuclear enrichment program. This was most recently demonstrated by the discovery of a secret Iranian nuclear facility, the existence of which Iran has repeatedly denied. The IAEA member nations that "there has been no movement on remaining issues of concern which need to be clarified for the agency to verify the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program," and that the IAEA has "effectively reached a dead end, unless Iran engages fully with us." As you know, the "issues of concern" to which the IAEA referred are the growing body of evidence that the Iranian regime has experimented with nuclear weapons programs, including missile-delivery systems and tests of explosives that could serve as nuclear-bomb detonators.

Powerful voices within the Iranian government have responded with defiance to the IAEA report and its resolution condemning Iran’s secret nuclear-enrichment plant in Qom. On November 30, the Speaker of Iran’s parliament, Ali Larijani, suggested Iran will withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, said that, as a direct response to the IAEA resolution, Iran intends to build an additional 10 nuclear enrichment facilities – which would give Iran a total of 500,000 centrifuges, enough to produce over 150 bombs a year.

The stakes are exceedingly high. A nuclear-armed Iran is almost certain to initiate an arms race with other Middle Eastern and Arab nations who have reason to fear the religious, political and military ambitions of Iran’s extremist leaders. As the world's leading state sponsor of international terror, we must assume Iran will sell or give nuclear weapons to extremist groups that are declared and demonstrated enemies to America and her allies.

As demonstrated by their co-sponsorship of implementing legislation, an overwhelming, bipartisan consensus exists among your colleagues in the House and Senate in support of sanctions on foreign companies that: export refined petroleum products, including gasoline, to Iran; help maintain Iran’s domestic refining capacity; provide ships or shipping services to transport such products; underwrite those shipments to Iran; or finance or broker those shipments. Although these proposed sanctions are a serious start, we urge you to consider other, targeted sanctions as may be required to demonstrate our seriousness to the Iranian regime.

There is an overwhelming bipartisan consensus in Congress in favor of these sanctions. President Obama’s December 31 deadline is days away. And the IAEA has concluded that diplomatic efforts have reached a dead end. It is time for you to bring legislation implementing these sanctions to the floor for a vote. Additionally we urge you to make your actions and concerns known to the United Nations Security Council and our allies in the international community who share a common interest in preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

As the clock runs out, we must remember that Iran remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, is funding Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon and Gaza, has sought to destabilize democratic and Western-leaning regimes throughout the Middle East, is currently arresting and detaining political opponents, actively persecutes its Christian citizens, has shot protestors in cold blood in the streets, and its president has denied the Holocaust and vowed to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. We speak out today on behalf of millions of Christians who believe that the interests of peace and security would best be served by our elected representatives sending a powerful signal that this tyrannical Iranian regime shall never threaten the world with nuclear weapons.

Sincerely,

Dr. Pat Robertson, President of Christian Broadcasting Network
Chuck Colson, chairman, BreakPoint
Richard Land, President of Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Southern Baptist Convention
Tom Minnery, Senior Vice President of Government and Public Policy at Focus on the Family
Dr. John Hagee, Cornerstone Church, San Antonio, Texas
Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America
Colin A. Hanna, President of Let Freedom Ring
Michael Little, President of Christian Broadcasting Network
Anthony Verdugo, Founder and Executive Director of Christian Family Coalition
C. Preston Noell, III, President of Tradition, Family, Property, Inc.
Micah Clark, Executive Director of American Family Association of Indiana
Michael Novak, Author, Scholar and awarded 1994 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion
Matthew Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel
Dr. Benny Tate, Senior Pastor, Rock Springs Church, Milner, GA
Jack Rohrer, President of Virginia Faith and Freedom Coalition
Robert E. Reccord, President of Total Life Impact Ministries
Ron Shuping, Executive VP of Programming, The Inspiration Networks
William A. Donohue, President of The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
Ronald J. Rychlak, MDLA Professor of Law, University of Mississippi, School of Law
Diana L. Banister, Vice President and Partner of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs
Deal Hudson, Executive Director of Catholic Advocate
Mark A. Smith, President of Ohio Christian University
Dr. Richard Lee, President of There’s Hope America
Jack Whelan, Chairman of Culture of Life Foundation
Peter Huessy, President of GeoStrategic Analysis of Potomac, Maryland
Bobby Eberle, President of GOPUSA
Bud Hansen, Papal Foundation
Jeffrey Karls, President of Magdalen College
David R. Carlin, Professor of Sociology and Philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island
Al Kresta, Executive Producer of Ave Maria Radio
Cortes E. DeRussy, Bronxville, NY, Former Board Chair, Crisis Magazine
Dr. James Merritt, Senior Pastor, Cross Pointe Church, Duluth, GA
Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, Chairman of Traditional Values Coalition
Jordan Sekulow, Director of International Operations at American Center for Law and Justice
Gary L. Bauer, President of American Values
Jim Martin, 60-Plus

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)
        

Baltimore's Mircale Temple Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Pray at the Pump Movement, which organized "vigils of hope" last summer, now are turning their attention to Tiger Woods.

And President Barack Obama, whom they identify as "also vulnerable to womanizing."

And also NFL quarterback Michael Vick; Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, former Gov. Eliott Spitzer of New York; District of Columbia Councilman and former Mayor Marion Barry; movie star Mel Gibson and former Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho.

The church and the movement have scheduled an "URGENT CHRISTMAS PRAYER VIGIL" for Woods and the rest from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Wednesday at the Temple Seventh-day Adventist Church, at 100 South Rock Glen Road. The press release follows.

BALTIMORE HOLDS URGENT CHRISTMAS PRAYER VIGIL FOR TIGER WOODS

Baltimorians call for the world and especially the media to turn to the Bible and follow its principles of love as they deal with Tiger Woods sex scandal

Public and especially concerned Godly golfers are urged to stop by and pray for Tiger

The greatest golfer in the world has fallen from the grace of humans, but not from the grace of God who still loves him dearly. About 100 members of the Miracle Temple Seventh-day Adventist Church, located at 100 South Rock Glen Road, Baltimore, Maryland and the Pray at the Pump Movement (PAPM) will drive this point home on this Wednesday evening, December 16 from 7:30 to 9:00 PM as they hold an Emergency Chirstmas Prayer Vigil for this true sports icon. These members want him to know that even though the entire world seems against him, that they care about him as he desperately tries to hold his family together in accordance with God's word. Those gathered say that we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God and urge the critical public to show compassion for Tiger as well as other celebrities who fall from grace. Dr. Errol Stoddart, who is pastor of the progressive congregation and an avid golf fan, will preach about the need for the public to wrap their arms around Tiger during this moment of disgrace. He points to a number of individuals in the Bible such as Abraham, David and Solomon who became victims of worldly lust, but whom God forgave. If God can forgive us, we should be able to forgive others. Stoddart hopes to use his years of marriage counseling to deal with this horrific situation.

The Pray at the Pump Movement will circulate a Book of Hope and Deliverance for those present to sign. The good wishes will be sent directly to the Tiger Woods Foundation and hopefully Tiger will read them. The group is working on an online petition of support for the golf star. PAPM has constantly emphasized that the public should show compassion for stars who are nothing more than human beings that the public has placed on lofty pedestals. They organized vigils of hope when Michael Jackson, the King Of Pop died. Twyman stated that people almost totally forgot that he gave more money to charity than any other star including Oprah. Tiger's Foundation has been a pivotal force in helping and inspiring children in low income neighborhoods. Twyman suggest that Woods use the time off with his family to contemplate how he can better use the wealth that God has blessed him with to help Americans who are losing their homes and jobs at an alarming rate. PAPM calls upon the country to pray for these celebrities who have lost their way such as Michael Vick; Governors Sanford and Spitzer; DC's Marion Barry; Hollywood star Mel Gibson: Senator Craig and a host of other political and entertainment celebrities. PAPM thinks that the higher a person goes, the more they must depend upon God for their stability. With his economic policies failing and unemployment at staggering high levels, Twyman is calling on Obama to turn more to God and prayer and less to the wisdom of his human council of economic advisers. The group is lobbying to urge Obama to hold an ecumenical prayer vigil/Summit for this battered economy at The White House similar to the recent jobs summit. "Obama is just a man, like Tiger Woods, that God has richly blessed, says Twyman. At some point, both must come to the realization that God and not man is Supreme. It was God that arranged events so that Obama could win the Nobel Peace Prize after being in office for only 11 days. We saw the power of prayer as the gas prices started coming down when we organized pray circles at gas pumps all over the country. Both Tiger and Obama who is also vulnerable to womanizing will only be able to succeed as they focus on prayer and fasting just like the prophets of old did when things got rough. Our prayers are with Tiger during this hour of trial."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
        

Chabad Lubavitch will celebrate Hanukkah on Monday with a parade of cars carrying menorahs and playing music.

The procession, which is set to include a fire truck, a mitzvah tank and more than 70 cars, leaves from Rambam Yeshiva, across the street from Baltimore’s famed Hanukkah House. The private residence, which for decades has attracted visitors with lights, placards and decorated figurines during the holiday, has been put up for sale.

The parade leaves Rambam Yeshiva at 6:30 p.m. and winds through Park Heights toward the Festival at Woodholme Shopping Center on Reisterstown Road, where a storefront houses Chabad’s Hanukkah Wonderland.

Organizers suggest the Atrium on Smith Avenue, where the procession is expected to pass at about 7 p.m., as a good vantage point.

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

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, spiritual leader of the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski, the vicar for Hispanics, and the Spanish-speaking priests of the archdiocese will celebrate a Mass for Our Lady of Guadalupe at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Baltimore Basilica.

Catholics believe Mary appeared to an Indian peasant, Juan Diego, in 1531 on a hill near what is now Mexico City. Images of Our Lady of Guadalupe our popular throughout Latin America.
A vehicle procession begins at 11 at Our Lady of Pompei Church, 229 S. Conkling St. and will follow the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe through the streets of Baltimore and ending at the Basilica. At 1 p.m., children carrying flowers and wearing traditional costumes that reflect the different countries and cultures represented in Baltimore’s Hispanic community will follow the image into the Basilica.

Five hundred years after a Spanish priest celebrated the first Catholic Mass in North America at St. Augustine, Fla., Latinos are expected to become a majority in the U.S. Catholic Church. Already more than 50 percent of Catholics under 25 are Hispanic, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. About 70 percent of the 47 million Latinos in the United States are Catholic.

Eighteen parishes in the Archdiocese of Baltimore offer Masses in Spanish.

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

A judge has ordered a Chicago man against taking his daughter to church, CBS station WBBM-TV reports.

The unusual restraining order was issued Friday after Joseph Reyes, 35, had his daughter baptized in a Catholic church and sent his estranged wife a picture of the ceremony, the station reports. The order bars Reyes from taking their child to any house of worship that is not Jewish.

Rebecca Reyes says her soon-to-be ex-husband had agreed to raise their daughter Jewish, the station reports. Joseph Reyes says Rebecca Reyes is “mistaken regarding that conversation.”

In her petition for the temporary restraining order, the station reports, Rebecca Reyes says raising their daughter in any faith other than Judaism will cause the child irreparable harm.

Joseph Reyes' divorce attorney told the station he “almost fell off [his] chair” when he read the petition.

"I thought maybe we were in Afghanistan and this was the Taliban,” attorney Joel Brodsky said. “This is America. We have a First Amendment right of freedom of religion."

Brodsky says he will appeal the order, the station reports.

The restraining order asks the judge to bar Joseph from taking his daughter to church. According to the petition, failure to restrain him will "continue to the emotional detriment of the child."

Rebecca and her attorneys declined to go on camera but they did release the following statement: "We stand by our petition. We feel the judge will do whatever is best for the child."

Read the rest of the story here.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (30)
        

The Vatican and the world’s largest particle physics laboratory are planning to collaborate on studies concerning the origin of the universe, Catholic News Service reports.

Ugo Amaldi, a professor of medical physics who works closely with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), said the Geneva-based laboratory would like to invite an astronomer from the Vatican Observatory to join in the research, CNS reports.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, “is an international and European [facility], and to have the Vatican Observatory send some or one of its young scientists will be something that is extremely important,” Amaldi told reporters at the Vatican this week, CNS reports.

The head of the Vatican Observatory, the Rev. Jose Funes, said he hopes Gabriele Gionti, a young Vatican astronomer who will be ordained in June, will be involved, CNS reports. Gionti has a doctorate in physics and specializes in quantum gravity, CNS reports, and is finishing his theology studies at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, Calif.

Father Funes told CNS that scientists at CERN are interested in “astroparticles – the first particles in the universe. And at the moment we don’t have anyone on our staff prepared to follow these studies. So maybe Gabriele Gionti has the background and the interest in collaborating on these topics.”

Amaldi told CNS that even though CERN scientists study subatomic particles and Vatican astronomers study large celestial objects and enormous galaxies, “there are theoretical similarities” in their research on the origin of the universe, stars and planets.

He told CNS that a Vatican collaborator ideally would stay a year to work closely with scientists conducting experiments with CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, which is used in experiments aimed at increasing understanding of what happened immediately after the Big Bang.

Read the rest of the story at catholicreview.org.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

President Barack Obama won praise from a surprising admirer with his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peeace Prize: Sarah Palin.

The 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee tells USA Today that Obama's defense of war to combat "evil" -- for the use of which his predecessor took criticism -- could have been taken from her own memoir.

"Wow, that really sounded familiar," Palin tells USA Today's Kathy Kiely. "I talked, too, in my book about the fallen nature of man and why war is necessary at times."

The 2009 Nobel peace laureate devoted much of his speech Thursday speaking about war -- which he said was sometimes appropriate:

We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified. I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there's nothing weak -- nothing passive -- nothing naïve -- in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

Obama spoke at length also of religion, both as a catalyst of conflict and a corrective:

As the world grows smaller, you might think it would be easier for human beings to recognize how similar we are; to understand that we're all basically seeking the same things; that we all hope for the chance to live out our lives with some measure of happiness and fulfillment for ourselves and our families.

And yet somehow, given the dizzying pace of globalization, the cultural leveling of modernity, it perhaps comes as no surprise that people fear the loss of what they cherish in their particular identities -- their race, their tribe, and perhaps most powerfully their religion. In some places, this fear has led to conflict. At times, it even feels like we're moving backwards. We see it in the Middle East, as the conflict between Arabs and Jews seems to harden. We see it in nations that are torn asunder by tribal lines.

And most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint -- no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or the Red Cross worker, or even a person of one's own faith. Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but I believe it's incompatible with the very purpose of faith -- for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

Adhering to this law of love has always been the core struggle of human nature. For we are fallible. We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best of intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us.

But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached -- their fundamental faith in human progress -- that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.

For if we lose that faith -- if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace -- then we lose what's best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

The Rev. Rick Warren, under pressure from critics and activists to speak out against Ugandan legislation that would impose the death penalty for homosexuality, has now done so.

"We are all familiar with Edmund Burke’s insight, 'All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing,' " the influential Christian author and megachurch pastor says in a video statement Thursday to the pastors of the Africa nation. "That is why I’m sharing my heart with you today. As an American pastor, it is not my role to interfere with the politics of other nations, but it IS my role to speak out on moral issues. It is my role to shepherd other pastors who look to me for guidance, and it is my role to correct lies, errors and false reports when others associate my name with a law that I had nothing to do with, completely oppose and vigorously condemn."

Warren continues:

Of course, there are thousands of evil laws enacted around the world and I cannot speak to pastors about every one of them, but I am taking the extraordinary step of speaking to you – the pastors of Uganda and spiritual leaders of your nation – for five reasons:

First, the potential law is unjust, extreme and un-Christian toward homosexuals, requiring the death penalty in some cases. If I am reading the proposed bill correctly, this law would also imprison anyone convicted of homosexual practice.

Second, the law would force pastors to report their pastoral conversations with homosexuals to authorities.

Third, it would have a chilling effect on your ministry to the hurting. As you know, in Africa, it is the churches that are bearing the primary burden of providing care for people infected with HIV/AIDS. If this bill passed, homosexuals who are HIV positive will be reluctant to seek or receive care, comfort and compassion from our churches out of fear of being reported. You and I know that the churches of Uganda are the truly caring communities where people receive hope and help, not condemnation.

Fourth, ALL life, no matter how humble or broken, whether unborn or dying, is precious to God. My wife, Kay, and I have devoted our lives and our ministry to saving the lives of people, including homosexuals, who are HIV positive. It would be inconsistent to save some lives and wish death on others. We’re not just pro-life. We are whole life.

Finally, the freedom to make moral choices and our right to free expression are gifts endowed by God. Uganda is a democratic country with remarkable and wise people, and in a democracy everyone has a right to speak up. For these reasons, I urge you, the pastors of Uganda, to speak out against the proposed law.

Joshua Keating, blogging Friday at foreignpolicy.com, is one of several critics who say Warren's statement is too little, too late.

... no one is expecting Warren to comment on every unjust law in the world, just ones in countries where he has an extensive history of involvement, are sponsored by his onetime ally, and concerns a subject that he frequently discusses. After the Ugandan Anglican Church threatened to leave the Church of England, Warren rose to their defense, saying, “The Church of England is wrong and I support the Church of Uganda on the boycott.” So it's not as if he's afraid to wade into Uganda's culture wars.

Warren says that, "some erroneously concluded that I supported this terrible bill, and some even claimed I was a sponsor of the bill." But people only came to these conclusions because of his refusal to comment. Warren might not think it's fair that he was asked about the law, but he's a public figure that many people look to for moral guidance and it shouldn't be an unreasonable demand to expect him to condemn the state-sanctioned murder of innocent people.

Moreover, reports yesterday indicated that the Ugandan parliament had actually removed the most controversial portion of the bill -- the possibility of the death penaly or life infrisonment for homosexuals. So Warren actually waited for the death-penalty provision to be dropped before speaking out against it.

I'm glad that he made this statement and hope that it makes a difference in Uganda, but it's not exactly a profile in courage.

The complete text of the statement, and nine "Key Facts Concerning Recent Media and Blog Reports on Rick Warren’s Position on Uganda," follow below.

We are all familiar with Edmund Burke’s insight, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” That is why I’m sharing my heart with you today. As an American pastor, it is not my role to interfere with the politics of other nations, but it IS my role to speak out on moral issues. It is my role to shepherd other pastors who look to me for guidance, and it is my role to correct lies, errors and false reports when others associate my name with a law that I had nothing to do with, completely oppose and vigorously condemn. I am referring to the pending law under consideration by the Ugandan Parliament, known as the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

As a pastor, I’ve found the most effective way to build consensus for social change is usually through direct quiet diplomacy and behind-the-scenes dialogue, rather than through media. But because I didn’t rush to make a public statement, some erroneously concluded that I supported this terrible bill, and some even claimed I was a sponsor of the bill. You in Uganda know that is untrue.

I am releasing this video to you and your congregations to correct these untruths and to urge you to make a positive difference at this critical point in your nation.

While we can never deny or water down what God’s Word clearly teaches about sexuality, at the same time the church must stand to protect the dignity of all individuals – as Jesus did and commanded all of us to do.

Let me be clear that God’s Word states that all sex outside of marriage is not what God intends. Jesus reaffirmed what Moses wrote that marriage is intended to be between one man and one woman committed to each other for life. Jesus also taught us that the greatest commandment is to love our neighbors as ourselves. Since God created all, and Jesus suffered and died for all, then we are to treat all with respect. The Great Commandment has been the centerpiece of my life and ministry for over 35 years.

Of course, there are thousands of evil laws enacted around the world and I cannot speak to pastors about every one of them, but I am taking the extraordinary step of speaking to you – the pastors of Uganda and spiritual leaders of your nation – for five reasons:

First, the potential law is unjust, extreme and un-Christian toward homosexuals, requiring the death penalty in some cases. If I am reading the proposed bill correctly, this law would also imprison anyone convicted of homosexual practice.

Second, the law would force pastors to report their pastoral conversations with homosexuals to authorities.

Third, it would have a chilling effect on your ministry to the hurting. As you know, in Africa, it is the churches that are bearing the primary burden of providing care for people infected with HIV/AIDS. If this bill passed, homosexuals who are HIV positive will be reluctant to seek or receive care, comfort and compassion from our churches out of fear of being reported. You and I know that the churches of Uganda are the truly caring communities where people receive hope and help, not condemnation.

Fourth, ALL life, no matter how humble or broken, whether unborn or dying, is precious to God. My wife, Kay, and I have devoted our lives and our ministry to saving the lives of people, including homosexuals, who are HIV positive. It would be inconsistent to save some lives and wish death on others. We’re not just pro-life. We are whole life.

Finally, the freedom to make moral choices and our right to free expression are gifts endowed by God. Uganda is a democratic country with remarkable and wise people, and in a democracy everyone has a right to speak up. For these reasons, I urge you, the pastors of Uganda, to speak out against the proposed law.

My role, and the role of the PEACE Plan, whether in Uganda or any other country, is always pastoral, not political. I vigorously oppose anything that hinders the goals of the PEACE Plan: Promoting reconciliation, Equipping ethical leaders, Assisting the poor, Caring for the sick, and Educating the next generation, which includes the protection of children.

Please know that you and the people of Uganda are in my constant prayers. This Christmas season I pray you will experience the three purposes of Christmas as announced by the angel at the birth of Christ. First, the angel said, “I bring you good news of great joy.” Christmas is a time of celebration – Jesus is the Good News for the whole world. God came to earth to be with us! Next, the angel said, “For unto us is born this day a Savior, who is Christ the Lord!” Christmas is a time for salvation. If we didn’t need a Savior, God would not have sent one. Finally, the angel said, “Peace on earth, good will toward men.” Christmas is a time for reconciliation. The message of Christmas is good cheer, good news and good will for the whole world.

It is my prayer that the churches and people of Uganda will experience all three of these this season. May God bless you; and may God bless the nation of Uganda.

Key Facts Concerning Recent Media and Blog Reports on Rick Warren’s Position on Uganda

1. Do you support the death penalty for homosexuals?
Absolutely not. ALL life, no matter how humble or broken, whether unborn or dying, is precious to God. My wife, Kay, and I have devoted our lives and our ministry to saving the lives of people, including homosexuals, who are HIV positive. It would be inconsistent to save some lives and wish death on others. We’re not just pro-life. We are whole life.

2. Do you support life imprisonment for homosexuality?
Of course not. I oppose the criminalization of homosexuality. The freedom to make moral choices is endowed by God. Since God gives us that freedom, we must protect it for all, even when we disagree with their choices.

3. Are you a friend of the President of Uganda?
No. I’ve never met him, and never had any kind of communications with him or with any member of the Ugandan Parliament.

4. Didn’t the President of Uganda say he wanted his country to be Purpose Driven?
No, he didn’t. That was said by the President of Rwanda, not Uganda, at a national rally in Rwanda in 2005. Years later, the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda made a similar comment so people are confusing Uganda with Rwanda, the country next to Uganda. While we have just begun to train pastors in Uganda, we are very involved in Rwanda, creating a nationwide PEACE Plan at the invitation of the churches there. Over 1,000 Saddleback members have served on humanitarian projects in Rwanda.

5. What did you do when you heard about the proposed Ugandan law?
I wrote to the most influential leader I knew in that country, the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda, and shared my opposition and concern. He wrote me back, saying that he, too, was opposed to the death penalty for homosexuals. There are thousands of evil laws enacted around the world that kill people (For instance, last year, 146,000 Christians around the world were killed because of their faith.). In this case, I knew the Archbishop in Uganda, so I did what I could, but my influence in that nation has been greatly exaggerated by the media.

6. Is Uganda Pastor Martin Ssempa an associate who represents you?
Not at all. At each of our Global Summits on AIDS (on World AIDS Day) we’ve invited speakers from a wide spectrum of religions, beliefs, political views and health care expertise. We’ve had believers and atheists; liberals and conservatives; gays and straights. Ssempa was just one of over 200 speakers we’ve invited. At each Summit we make it clear that no speaker represents us, and that we don’t control, endorse or agree with all that is said. Our desire is to encourage everyone to work together in ending HIV/AIDS and caring for those infected and affected. Ssempa was one of many speakers in 2005 and 2006. In 2007, when we learned that Ssempa’s beliefs and actions were vastly different than ours, we disassociated ourselves from him.

7. Did you say that homosexuality is not a human right?
Absolutely not. What I said in an interview in Uganda was that there is no civil right to gay marriage guaranteed by the United States Constitution. All Americans, and I believe all people, are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” as spoken by the United States Declaration of Independence.

8. Do you know Scott Lively?
No, I do not know Scott Lively and have had no contact with him regarding Uganda or any other issue. I would certainly not associate with anyone who denies the Holocaust, one of the greatest tragedies in human history.

9. Are you and Peter Wagner attempting to rid the world of homosexuals?
Absolutely not. Peter Wagner was a seminary professor of mine, but not my doctoral dissertation advisor. I have not had contact with Peter Wagner for many years and am certainly not conspiring with him for any purpose. Additionally, the event chronicled at Angels Stadium in 2005 has been grossly misrepresented. I was simply arguing that Christians could have a tremendous effect for good in the world if they had the same dedication as the followers of Mao. I would never argue that anyone should emulate or espouse the views of Mao, Hitler or Lenin.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

The Rev. Jason Poling is the Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a Disney fan, in much the same way that I wouldn’t describe Bob Ehrlich as a Martin O’Malley fan. But I was deeply impressed by The Princess and the Frog.

It wasn’t the animation, though having been exposed to far too many of Disney’s “dreck-to-video” offerings it was a pleasure to see an animated film produced with such care. Nor was it the story, with its predictable Disney-esque plotlines. It wasn’t even the brilliant minor comic figures, though they were outstanding: one of the virtues of animation is that characters may be literally overdrawn, achieving comic effect that would be tiresome in a formulaic live-action movie. (So that I don’t spoil anything for folks who haven’t seen the movie, let’s just say that the show was stolen by a firefly named Ray who could have been the love child of Sir Mix-A-Lot, Thomas Edison and the Cavity Creeps.)

No, I was most impressed by the quality of the film that will no doubt emerge as the most controversial: the spiritual. And I don’t mean spiritual in the “believe in yourself” sense that pervades so much of the Disney cosmology; this film features real-live demonic activity and otherworldly malevolence that deserves a G rating as much as the original (un-Victorianized) Grimm tales do.

The villain in The Princess and the Frog is, like every Disney villain, rotten to the core: egotistical, manipulative, deceitful and power-hungry. Yet while Dr. Facilier exhibits enough nastiness to frighten Disney’s core audience, what strikes real terror into the hearts of men is his shadow side …literally. We see on the screen not merely Dr. Facilier but what my Jewish friends would call his yetzer hara, the evil essence of his soul, portrayed as a shadow that manifests the true intentions behind his sneering grin.

Photo courtesy of Disney

And it is not merely Dr. Facilier’s inner demon that we see, but those of his “friends on the other side,” whose aid he enlists by means of voodoo magic. The Witch in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty were capable of some wicked magic, but this villain is engaged in genuine intercourse with the dark side of the spirit realm; indeed, as the film progresses he demonstrates himself to be literally in debt to his devilish masters. The evil in The Princess and the Frog is not merely the craven fratricidal selfishness of Scar in The Lion King; it is sinister to the point of being profoundly infernal.

As I thought about the spiritual component of the film, my mind went back to the controversy that erupted in evangelical circles over the Harry Potter books. Some argued that as these books deal with witchcraft and sorcery they should not taint the minds of good Christian youth; others saw the “magic” of Harry Potter as instrumental, a means of exercising power liable to corruption but not a malevolent personal force in itself. In this way, J. K. Rowling followed her initialed countrymen C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien in developing villains, as well as heroes, who interacted with magic the way all of us interact with strong powers like wealth, or sexuality, or authority, or wits, and either master these capacities or are twisted by them until we ultimately become something less than human even as our sins take on a superhuman quality.

In this respect The Princess and the Frog is the Disney film most deeply in touch with the ancient wisdom that there is such a thing as evil, that human beings are subject to being hijacked by the agendas of malevolent personal forces we cannot see, that our weaknesses expose us to this kind of manipulation, and that virtues like loyalty, industry and charity are helpful (though not guaranteed) means of keeping us from danger. Dr. Facilier’s name derives from the French word for “easy;" it is the low road, the path of least resistance that leads us to trouble.

Beyond the sound moral instruction, though, I must note that it is unusual indeed to find occult practices like Tarot reading outside of a horror film; more so to find them in portrayed in a children’s movie not as harmless parlor tricks but as a highway to Hell.

It would not be inappropriate for those of us who have believed this sort of thing all along to recognize Disney’s achievement.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)
Categories: Christianity, Culture, Evangelicalsm, Guest Posts, Jason Poling
        

Author Robert Greene, whose books on power and strategy have found an audience in the hip hop community, will be a featured guest at 9:15 a.m. Sunday at Bethel AME Church at 1300 Druid Hills Ave., Baltimore.

Greene's works include "The Art of Seduction," "The 33 Strategies of War," and "The 48 Laws of Power." His latest book, "The 50th Law," co-written with the rapper 50 Cent, is a favorite of the Rev. Dr. Frank M. Reid III, senior pastor at Bethel, who has been passing it out to church members and friends.

Greene will speak to the congregation and sign copies of the book.

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

Nearly half of all Americans say they have had a religious or mystical experience, according to a new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and significant minorities say they have seen a ghost or communed with the dead.

The percentages of Christians reporting such experiences, or holding such New Age or Eastern beliefs as earthly reincarnation, astrology and the presence of spiritual energy in objects such as trees, mountains or crystals is only slightly lower than those of the public in general.

Such mixing and matching of beliefs is characteristic among Americans, according to Pew.

"The religious beliefs and practices of Americans do not fit neatly into conventional categories," the forum reports. "Many say they attend worship services of more than one faith or denomination – even when they are not traveling or going to special events like weddings and funerals."

Twenty-nine percent of Americans say they have been in touch with the dead, 18 percent report having seen or been in the presence of a ghost and 15 percent say they have consulted a psychic or fortune teller, according to the survey of 4,013 adults conducted in August in English and Spanish. The percentages of Christians reporting such experiences were the same or only slightly lower than those among Americans in general.

Read the full report at pewforum.org.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
Categories: Christianity, Culture, New Age
        

With lawmakers in Uganda poised to make homosexuality a crime punishable by death, a group of American Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical leaders is speaking out.

From a release by the groups the Catholics in Alliance and Faith in Public Life:

“Given U.S. Christian groups’ extensive history of involvement in Uganda, these numerous Catholic, Evangelical and Mainline Protestant leaders – including several members of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships – felt especially compelled to speak out against the ‘Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2009’ as counter to Christian values and call on all American Christian leaders to join them.”

“This bill is an affront to human dignity and offensive to Christians around the world who take seriously Christ’s command to love our neighbors as ourselves,” said Thomas P. Melady, a former U.S. ambassador to Uganda and the Vatican and one of the signers of the statement. “I’m proud to stand with other people of faith who believe our values compel us to speak out against this profound injustice.”

According to the Associated Press, Ugandan lawmakers proposed the measure after a visit by leaders of U.S. conservative Christian ministries that promote therapy for gays to become heterosexual. But at least one of those leaders has denounced the bill, as have some other conservative and liberal Christians in the United States.

"I agree with the general goal but this law is far too harsh," Scott Lively, a California preacher and author of "The Pink Swastika" and other books that advise parents how to "recruit-proof" their children from gays, told the AP.

Lively did not sign the statement, which appears after the jump.

U.S. Christian Leaders’ Statement on "Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2009"

Our Christian faith recognizes violence, harassment and unjust treatment of any human being as a betrayal of Jesus' commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. As followers of the teachings of Christ, we must express profound dismay at a bill currently before the Parliament in Uganda. The "Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2009" would enforce lifetime prison sentences and in some cases the death penalty for homosexual behavior, as well as punish citizens for not reporting their gay and lesbian neighbors to the authorities.

As Americans, some may wonder why we are raising our voices to oppose a measure proposed in a nation so far away from home. We do so to bear witness to our Christian values, and to express our condemnation of an injustice in which groups and leaders within the American Christian community are being implicated. We appeal to all Christian leaders in our own country to speak out against this unjust legislation.

In our efforts to imitate the Good Samaritan, we stand in solidarity with those Ugandans beaten and left abandoned by the side of the road because of hatred, bigotry and fear. Especially during this holy season of Advent, when the global Christian community prepares in hope for the light of Christ to break through the darkness, we pray that they are comforted by God's love.

Regardless of the diverse theological views of our religious traditions regarding the morality of homosexuality, in our churches, communities and families, we seek to embrace our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters as God's children worthy of respect and love. Yet we are painfully aware that in our country gays and lesbians still face hostility and violence. We recognize that such treatment degrades the human family, threatens the common good and defies the teachings of our Lord -- wherever it occurs.

Thomas P. Melady
Former U.S. Ambassador to Uganda and the Vatican

Ronald J. Sider
President
Evangelicals for Social Action

Jim Wallis
President
Sojourners
Rocco Puopolo, SX
Executive Director
Africa Faith and Justice Network
James E. Hug, S.J.
President
Center of Concern

Rev. Samuel Rodriguez
President
National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference

Institute Leadership Team of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas

Rev. Adam Hamilton
United Methodist pastor and author

Arturo Chavez
President & CEO
Mexican American Catholic College

Dr. Sharon E. Watkins
General Minister and President
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada

T. Michael McNulty, SJ
Justice and Peace Director
Conference of Major Superiors of Men

Dr. David P. Gushee
Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics
Mercer University

Marie Lucey, OSF
Associate Director for Social Mission
Leadership Conference of Women Religious

Bryan N. Massingale, S.T.D.
President, Catholic Theological Society of America
Associate Professor of Theological Ethics
Marquette University

Melissa Rogers
Director
Wake Forest University Divinity School's Center for Religion and Public Affairs

Maryann Cusimano Love
Department of Politics
The Catholic University of America

The Rev. Canon Peg Chemberlin
Incoming President
National Council of Churches of Christ USA

The Hon. Douglas W. Kmiec

Diana Butler Bass
Author and Educator

Jim Martin, SJ
Associate Editor
America magazine

Brian McLaren
author. speaker. Activist

Rev. Christopher P. Promis, C.S.Sp.
Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Promoter
Congregation of the Holy Spirit
Province of the USA
Dr. Derrick Harkins
Senior Pastor, Nineteenth Street Baptist Church
Board Member, World Relief

Marie Dennis
Director
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
Co-President, Pax Christi International

Jim Winkler
General Secretary
United Methodist General Board of Church and Society

Thomas J. Reese, S.J.
Senior Fellow
Woodstock Theological Center
Georgetown University

The Reverend Debra W. Haffner
Executive Director
Religious Institute

Stephen F. Schneck, PhD
Director
Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies
The Catholic University of America

Geoffrey Black
General Minister and President
United Church of Christ

David Hollenbach, S.J.
University Chair in Human Rights and International Justice
Theology Department
Boston College

Richard R. Gaillardetz
Murray/Bacik Professor of Catholic Studies
University of Toledo

Alex Mikulich
Research Fellow
Jesuit Social Research Institute
Loyola University

Christine Firer Hinze
Professor, Christian Ethics
Department of Theology
Fordham University

Rev. Dr. Ken Brooker Langston
Director
Disciples Justice Action Network and Coordinator, Disciples Center for Public Witness

Paulette Skiba, BVM
Religious Studies
Clarke College

Paul Lakeland
Aloysius P. Kelley S.J. Professor of Catholic Studies
Fairfield University

J. Matthew Ashley
Associate Professor of Systematic Theology
Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Theology
University of Notre Dame

Erin Lothes Biviano
Fellow- Theology, Center for the Study of Science and Religion
Columbia University

Rev. Paul de Vries, PhD
President, New York Divinity School
Board Member, National Association of Evangelicals

John Sniegocki
Associate Professor of Christian Ethics
Xavier University

Nancy Dallavalle
Chair, Department of Religious Studies
Fairfield University

M. Shawn Copeland
Associate Professor of Systematic Theology
Boston College

David DeCosse
Director of Campus Ethics Programs
Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
Santa Clara University
Bruce T. Morrill
Associate Professor of Theology
Boston College

Kristin Heyer
Associate Professor, Religious Studies
Santa Clara University

Chris Korzen
Executive Director
Catholic United

Jeannine Hill Fletcher
Associate Professor of Theology
Fordham University

William O'Neill, S.J.
Jesuit School of Theology of
Santa Clara University

Michael Duffy, Ed.D.
Director,
Joan and Ralph Lane Center for Catholic Studies and Social Thought
University of San Francisco

Elena Procario-Foley, Ph.D.
Driscoll Professor of Jewish-Catholic Studies
Iona College

Lisa Sowe Cahill,
Monan Professor of Theology
Boston College

Dennis M. Doyle
Religious Studies
University of Dayton
Lew Daly
author of God's Economy: Faith-based Initiatives and the Caring State

Bradford E. Hinze
Professor of Theology
Fordham University

Kirk O. Hanson
University Professor and Executive Director
Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
Santa Clara University

David J O'Brien
University Professor of Faith and Culture
University of Dayton

William L. Portier
University of Dayton

Terrence W. Tilley
Professor of Theology and Chair of the Department
Fordham University

Margaret A. Farley
Gilbert L. Stark Professor Emerita of Christian Ethics
Yale University Divinity School

Nicholas P. Cafardi
Dean Emeritus and Professor of Law
Duquesne University School of Law

Teresa Delgado, PhD
Director, Peace and Justice Studies Program
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
Iona College
Maria Riley, OP
Center of Concern
Washington, DC

Victoria Kovari
Interim Executive Director
Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good

Adam Tice
Associate Pastor
Hyattsville Mennonite Church

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (57)
        

Israel's justice minister called this week for Jewish law to become binding in Israel, causing a stir that has cut to the heart of the country's simmering secular-religious divide, the Associated Press is reporting.

Yaakov Neeman's office tried to contain the uproar Tuesday by saying his words were taken out of context and that he had no intention of replacing Israel's current legal system, the AP reports. But his comments touched a raw nerve among secular Israelis wary of what they consider to be religious coercion by the Orthodox Jewish minority.

From the story:

Neeman, an observant Jew, told a rabbinical conference on Monday that the Bible contains "a complete solution to all the things we are dealing with."

"Step by step we will bestow religious law upon the citizens of Israel and transform religious law into the binding law of the state," he said. Israeli newspapers said the rabbis attending the conference applauded him wildly, but some lawmakers later attacked his remarks as antidemocratic.

Secular Jews make up about 80 percent of the Jewish population. While many participate in some religious observances, only the Orthodox adhere to Judaism's strict regimen of rules, including praying three times a day and not driving on the Sabbath.

Opposition lawmaker Haim Oron warned of a "troubling process of Talibanization" in Israel.

In the wake of the commotion, Neeman's office put out a statement Tuesday saying he spoke only "in broad terms" about "the importance of Jewish law in the life of the state."

The minister's remarks did not imply "a call to replace state laws with religious laws, either directly or indirectly," the statement said.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

We sat down on Tuesday with the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, who on Saturday became the first openly lesbian Episcopal priest elected a bishop in the Anglican Communion.

Following is a transcript of our conversation, which started with a question about Williams' warning.

With respect to the Archbishop of Canterbury, he has a personal relationship with the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, and I leave that in their realm. Certainly, I’m not ignorant of issues in the culture and the church, so yes, I can say I anticipated some kind of reaction. You never know what kind of reaction.

I want to be quick to say that personally, I have received hundreds, maybe a thousand at this point, and one negative e-mail among all of them. I’ve received e-mails from all over the world – from an 18-year-old gay man in Auckland, New Zealand, who said how proud and thrilled he was for the church. Episcopalians in the Diocese of Dallas, which is one of our more conservative dioceses, and a married couple, lay people, who wrote and sent their congratulations. A Lesbian couple who are Roman Catholic in England who said they were having such difficulty in their own church and they were so proud that the Episcopal Church was taking leadership in this way, demonstrating not only the reality of who we already are, but the inclusiveness of Jesus’ love for all people.

On the role in which she now finds herself:

Well, it’s very humbling, because first of all, I mean, here’s one of the bylines that was said to me by one of my mentors in this diocese: ‘Always remember you’re a celebrant and not a celebrity.’ And what that means is I’m a servant of God in Christ. And as a servant, I’m here to serve God’s people. As a bishop, to be a chief shepherd of the people. And I never want to lose that centeredness in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So getting these e-mails from all over the world, that’s the level of the story that’s bigger than me. At which I become a symbol. And so I’m conscious of the symbolic nature of my election and hoped-for consecration, and it’s very humbling. It’s also very exciting, for me, you know, right now, I’m not ignorant of some people who are fearful that this will mean a real change in our relationship in the Anglican Communion. I’m more hopeful than fearful. I think it’s important right now that we say to the world that we tell our story as Christians, again, centered in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that we’re inclusive. That God loves everyone. That the church has his arms wide open as Jesus did on the cross and is ready to be a safe place for people, all people, regardless of who they are, to be a part of a loving community.

Are you comfortable being a symbol?

It’s both a privilege and a responsibility. I feel like it’s an incredible privilege to be hearing from people I don’t know and who don’t know me all over the world. I have a friend in Ghana who is an Anglican priest in Ghana. And hopefully, he, again, God willing, wants to attend the consecration. He’s a straight man. He’s married with two sons. And I and my partner, Becki, have hosted them in this country. So that’s all a privilege and very exciting.

You know, it’s a responsibility because people have entrusted me in this election. The people of the Diocese of Los Angeles have entrusted me to be a leader. And I feel my primary responsibility, certainly after the consent process, and after the consecration, is to the people of the Diocese of Los Angeles. But I guess that symbolic level of things going on, I hope simply to facilitate a kind of liberation for people who have felt imprisoned in various ways, either by their sexual identity, or by the color of their skin, or the fact that they’re in poverty or whatever, that this is all part of God’s freeing up of the world and healing and reconciling of the world.

On conservatives disappointed by her election:

I’ve made it a point throughout my ministry of seeking out very intentionally people who think and feel and believe differently than I do. So right now, I meet once a month with a brother in Christ, a fellow colleague in Christ, who may in fact be in pain. I’ve not talking with him since the election. But we meet noce a month faithfully to engage with one another. And my message to my more conservative sisters and brothers is I need you and the church needs you and you are part of this wonderful family that we hold dear. That in the Episcopal tradition we call the Episcopal Church. So I don’t know what kind of pain is out there yet, and I’d like to talk and say, keep talking, know that what is most important is that we continue to come together around the table on Sunday in celebration of the Eucharist.

I’m reading a book by the late Richard Norris that talks about leadership in the church and talks about Sunday worship and gathering for the Eucharist as a rehearsal of the reign of God. A rehearsal every week of the reign of God, or sometimes more frequently. So as long as I and my brothers and sisters who may be more conservative than I – and my brothers and sisters who may be more liberal than I, because I’m not the most liberal person on the planet, believe it or not, there are some ways in which I’m pretty conservative. But as long as we can come together at Christ’s table to celebrate and receive the Eucharist, we’re okay. You know, beyond that, we need to work it out, we need to engage one another, we need to continue in dialogue. The minute we can’t come to the table anymore, then we’re in trouble.

Are you looking forward to the job?

I am looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to there are some wonderful people I’ve have the honor and privilege of meeting in the diocese of Los Angeles. It’s people who are far smarter than I am and have lived maybe on both coasts already know how culturally different it is. The diocese of Los Angeles is an extremely diverse, multicultural, pluralistic diocese that is really seeking to think outside the box is perhaps putting it mildly. But there are interfaith dialogues going on and creative ways of worshipping. I’m in the process of learning Spanish, because if you live in Los Angeles, half the people are bilingual if not three quarters, so I’m learning Spanish and hope to really have something of an immersion experience in living there.

Bishop Job Bruno and my other sister who was elected prior to the election, Diane Jardine Bruce, is a wonderful, wonderful person, and I look forward to meeting all the people and being challenged by the newness and the creativity. And then beneath all that it seems to me there’s a yearning for community, a yearning for bonding together around the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So I’m looking forward to all of that. It’s a situation in which I feel excited for the future of the whole church and I also feel excited because I know I’m going to grow. I’ve learned about myself that I grow most and best when I have allowed myself, usually, in response to God’s call, to be put outside my comfort zone, and be challenged by the newness and difference of that.

Do you expect to be confirmed?

I’m very hopeful, having been the head deputy to General Convention for the Diocese of Maryland in four different general conventions now, in 2000, 2003, 2006 and 2009, my feeling is that the Episcopal Church is moving ahead. This is a progression. It’s not an earthquake or anything. We’ve had a lot of turmoil, a lot of conflict, a lot of dialogue, and we’re moving ahead to tell our stories, our stories of faith, to claim our identity as the Episcopal Church, to be who we are as the people of God and to deal with the hurting world. To deal with extreme poverty, to support in the ways in which we’ve pledged the United Nations program of the Millennium Development Goals, but also to be the church. To be the church for the world. To build community. To build up the body of Christ so we can better serve the world in Christ’s name.

Is there anything else you would like to say?

I’m deeply grateful. I am profoundly moved by just about everything that’s going on. The convention itself was and is just a wonderful experience of feeling the Holy Spirit move in a body larger than oneself. So that no one single person who came to that convention in the Diocese of Los Angeles, no one single person had his or her own will done. That’s what it meant to have the power of the Holy Spirit palpably present in a group gathered around the Eucharist, gathered around Christ. And then open to the power and movement and guidance of God’s Holy Spirit. That experience in and of itself is profoundly moving.

So I’m excited. I’m excited about the future. I think this is a real hopeful sign to the world. You know, especially to young people, who sometimes look at the church and especially the institutional church and say, 'What are they talking about? What is all this stuff?' I think the Episcopal Church is particularly poised to offer hope, to engage with the future, both in terms of new technology, and art and music and science with the story of the people of God.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
        

Maher Kharma is president of the Islamic Society of Annapolis.

Living in America, people came to realize one great thing that entices them to favor life in America over other places: the prevalence of the law of the land. When many countries around the world suffer corruption, bribery, inefficiency, the citizens of union see the super power of the law to be a protective gatekeeper of their rights, and a source of guidance that they can use when they go around taking care of their earthly business.

The dialogue that has erupted following the rise of the billboards carrying the statement “Are you good without God? Millions are,” has led many to think about the role that religion plays in our lives, and even to think if faith has a role in it. In looking back at the three Abrahamic religions, many commonalities arise: the claim of the followers that those religions are divine, moral-based systems, and a vehicle that followers are to use in order to secure peace of mind after death.

In recalling a recent discussion with a friend, he spoke about the days when people had to travel across the country without using maps or GPS systems. Thousands of miles of roads lay ahead of a traveler, from which one has to choose the one correct direction. Now, thanks to available technology, traveling has become much more convenient as it is no more a hit-or-miss kind of an experience. In the same manner, religions are intended to provide a road map for life. While humans do not land on earth with a manual, the manufacturer of humans provided the holy books to assure success and continuity of humankind in best possible format.

In attempting to encompass what religions provide humanity, it appears that much of known faith-based scriptures are intended to act as a platform for clarifying the rights of people on one another, obligations and responsibilities towards others, towards their wealth, life, intellect, as well as towards the most sacred resource humanity has, environment.

Whether non-believing groups agree or do not in the guidelines of any of the known religions, the persistent facts dictate that bad religious practitioners do not necessarily represent the true characters of the practice. Without traffic laws, motorists may not behave in a courteous manner, and many accidents would be the outcome of the absence of the law that should guide and direct people to reach their destination without compromising the rights of others. No one can convert a bad act into a good one because it is faith-based. Religions were taken advantage of, which resulted in abuse, murder, and other crimes. For sure when scriptures are taken out of context, misinterpretation finds room, and wrongdoing may be the outcome.

Having said that, modern society thrives on contemporary operational systems that guides and defines the role of its citizens to preserve the rights of all disregarding gender, color, or race, while each exercises own privileges. While religions come into place to provide a point of reference, with preemptive measures that can contribute to preserve the integrity of the society, they do interact with, but do not necessarily dictate, day-to-day functions of individuals, and are able to propose solutions that people can make sense of, which would allow them to function with the continuum of guidance that religions have to offer. As our society deals with many social ills, including rampant cost of alcoholism, drugs, domestic violence, and crime, man-made laws fall short of proposing comprehensive answers needed to restore balance in the society. Such a gap identifies better the more active roles that faith-based initiatives can provide for the betterment of the worldwide society, especially that man-made laws tend to satisfy known human needs, abilities, and limitations for a given generation within a given time frame. Unlike divine laws, which are intended to maintain balance in the universe, man-made ones are ego-based, and do not encompass universal laws. When mankind took control of maintaining a clean environment, the black hole resulted, leaving countries scrambling to control global warming. As knowledge facilitates ability to seek the truth, it is interesting to learn that the Pew Research center found that 51 percent of scientists believed in God.

Moreover, the need for reaching out to a super power has been evident from early days of human existence. Way before the presence of the Ten Commandments, or the knowledge of religions, God or holy people, idols became the established powers that people made and reached out to in time of hardship. As time evolved, the very presence of powerful and eloquent personnel further found room in people’s hearts, exemplified by roles models such as Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama. As a built in desire within people, people tend to appreciate and look up to those of exceptional abilities, such as celebrities, information technology innovators (e.g., Bill Gates), artists (e.g., Michaelangelo), and peacemakers (e.g., Nelson Mandela). As an extension of this innate desire, people look up to their own manufacturer, give credit, and would accept guidelines claimed to be of his, as some of the best existing ones for their operations.

Even within the framework of religions, which in essence function as advisory systems for individuals, while some of the guidelines are mandatory, others are optional and “good to do,” rather than being punch of rigid guidelines that intend to police people. If it were not for the divine control over nature phenomena such as weather, humans might argue over the best direction and speed of wind, the amount of rain needed in each part of the world, which would give already imbalanced powers additional reasons that might be abused to control minorities and less powerful countries.

Many incidents and worldwide financial, civil, and political abuses reflect that where the checks and balances were not established, or when consequences were not known to wrongdoers, humans have found ways to act out of their human nature to realize ego-based needs. In the same way, as neither God nor religious act as the “step father” figure for people, both powers give room for individual decision-making, after which, people return eternally to him to assess how accountable each was towards what he or she was entrusted with. If it was not for such gatekeeping mechanisms, society’s moral compass may be left up to the media, Hollywood, or politicians to dictate. Such a problem would threaten not only to alter historically accepted “norms” in a given culture, but also the very sacred family-based traditions that we all value and care to pass from one generation to the next will be at risk of being deformed.

As equality is one concept that religions work on materializing in society, unlike the beliefs of some, after all, salvation after death is not for all. This very concept applies to those who contributed towards their retirement plans, in contrary to others who had no post retirement plans. Once those two criteria of people reach their retirement, quality of life will differ based on their contributions prior to retiring. Accordingly, fairness dictates that in the hereafter, people are treated based on their actions during their lives.

While There is no clear evidence out there to claim that nonreligious individuals have lower levels of morality, as some can be even more giving and contributing than others, there is much evidence indicating that people of faith who adhere to the guidelines of their faith perform with a higher level of morality and based on an ethical frame of reference.

The rising of the billboards can and should be an opportunity for each to contemplate his or her own contributions to the society rather than investing much resources in critiquing others, and to reconcile our records in accordance to the best available frames of reference that will facilitate one’s success in life and after death.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

The widely circulated e-mail claiming that the Obama White House was putting up a "holiday tree," bereft of religiously themed ornaments, in place of the traditional Christmas tree has been roundly debunked (see factcheck.org and snopes.com, the latter of which includes video of First Lady Michelle Obama taking delivery of a clearly labeled "White House Christmas Tree 2009").

But a New York Times profile of Desirée Rogers, the currently embattled White House social secretary, suggests there was at least some discussion about backing away from Christmas tradition this year -- not as it involved the tree, but a Nativity scene.

When former social secretaries gave a luncheon to welcome Ms. Rogers earlier this year, one participant said, she surprised them by suggesting the Obamas were planning a “non-religious Christmas” — hardly a surprising idea for an administration making a special effort to reach out to other faiths.

The lunch conversation inevitably turned to whether the White House would display its crèche, customarily placed in a prominent spot in the East Room. Ms. Rogers, this participant said, replied that the Obamas did not intend to put the manger scene on display — a remark that drew an audible gasp from the tight-knit social secretary sisterhood. (A White House official confirmed that there had been internal discussions about making Christmas more inclusive and whether to display the crèche.)

Yet in the end, tradition won out; the executive mansion is now decorated for the Christmas holiday, and the crèche is in its usual East Room spot.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (128)
Categories: Christianity, Church and State, Holidays, People, Politics
        

Ed Buckner is president of American Atheists, Inc.

Claims abound that both Thanksgiving and Christmas are Christian in origin, but in fact both are grounded in non-Christian ideas and rituals that the churches have co-opted for their own purposes.

CHRISTMAS. Christianity is not the first, nor even the tenth religion to co-opt the Winter Solstice as their own holiday. For example, the Pagan festival of Yule (as in 'Yuletide') was a celebrated winter event centuries before Jesus' alleged birth. Indeed, nearly every tradition currently associated with Christmas has non-Christian roots. As an educational organization, American Atheists urges all Christians to ask their ministers why December 25 was chosen to celebrate Jesus' birth (enjoy the hemming and hawing).

WINTER SOLSTICE, The celestial event that started it all has been measured and celebrated since man first looked up. The solstice affects all life on earth, and the human traditions surrounding it are rich and plentiful. While Christmas is a Christian holiday, the Solstice is the real 'reason for the season', and it belongs to everyone.

A small, well-funded, and vocal minority of Christians are unhappy with the fact that their holiday has not totally eclipsed all others. They want all other celebrations squashed out, in an effort to make the season uniquely Christian, and organize protests and boycotts against any company which promotes an all-encompassing tolerant attitude ("Happy Holidays" vs "Merry Christmas"). American Atheists acknowledges that such views are only shared by an ignorant and bigoted minority of Christians, but at the same time we look to the more tolerant Christians to quell this attitude. As it is with Islam, the health and growth of Christianity depends on those within the church.

Atheists and others who demand strict separation of church and state seek only to prevent government agents from deciding, for anyone, whether or how to celebrate the season. The multitude of seasonal celebrations underscores the importance of the government's neutrality.

Atheists enjoy parties, celebrations, presents, and life. To those who celebrate America's diversity, we extend our heartfelt wishes for a wonderful season. To those who selfishly try to claim the whole season as their own, we wish a lousy one.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)
        

The Archbishop of Canterbury has issued a sharp rebuke of the election Saturday of Marylander Mary D. Glasspool as the first openly lesbian bishop in the worldwide Anglican communion.

“The election of Mary Glasspool by the Diocese of Los Angeles as suffragan bishop elect raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole,” Rowan Williams, head of the Protestant denomination, said in a statement released Sunday.

“The process of selection however is only part complete. The election has to be confirmed, or could be rejected, by diocesan bishops and diocesan standing committees. That decision will have very important implications.

“The bishops of the Communion have collectively acknowledged that a period of gracious restraint in respect of actions which are contrary to the mind of the Communion is necessary if our bonds of mutual affection are to hold.”

Glasspool, canon to the bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, was elected bishop suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles on Saturday. The Annapolis resident is to be installed in May, pending the consent of the bishops and standing committees of the 108 other Episcopal dioceses of the United States.

In a release, Bishop of Los Angeles J. Jon Bruno said the denial of consent “would be a violation of the canons of this church. At our last General Convention, we said we are nondiscriminatory.”

Bruno, whom Glasspool would assist as bishop suffragan, acknowledged rumors of a concerted effort not to give consent over her sexuality. Glasspool has been in a committed relationship with her partner for two decades.

"I would remind the Episcopal church and the House of Bishops they need to be conscientious about respecting the canons of the church and the baptismal covenant to respect the dignity of every human being,” Bruno said. “To not consent in this country out of fear of the reaction elsewhere in the Anglican Communion is to capitulate to titular heads."

Glasspool would be the first openly gay bishop chosen since the 2003 election of V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire brought a longstanding divide over homosexuality within the church out into the open.

“I’m very excited about the future of the whole Episcopal Church, and I see the Diocese of Los Angeles leading the way into that future,” Glasspool, 55, told delegates at the diocese’s annual convention. “Thanks be to our loving, surprising God. I look forward, in the coming months, to getting to know you all better, as together we build up the Body of Christ for the world.”

Ordained in 1981, Glasspool served in parishes in Philadelphia and Boston and St. Margaret’s in Annapolis before becoming canon to the bishops in 2001, according to the release. She has served on the diocese’s Standing Committee, the board of Episcopal Community Services of Maryland, and has been elected four times to head the deputation to General Convention.

The Right Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, bishop of Maryland, offered congratulations.

“This is a great day in the life of the Episcopal Church,” he said in a statement on Saturday. “I have often said that the staff of the Diocese of Maryland is one of the finest in the Church. When one of its members is called to other important positions in the church, then all of us are honored. As canon to the bishops since 2001, Mary has distinguished herself as a faithful and gifted priest who is well prepared to assume the mantle of leadership incumbent upon a bishop.”

Glasspool’s election comes months after the Episcopal General Convention, the principal governing body of the church in the United States, voted to declare homosexuals eligible for any ordained ministry and began writing prayers to bless gay unions.

A smaller group has broken away to form the Anglican Church of North America, a conservative body seeking separate recognition within the worldwide Anglican Communion. The Vatican, meanwhile, has announced plans to make it easier for disaffected conservative Anglicans to join the Catholic Church.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)
        

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 died, the Archdiocese of Baltimore announced on Saturday.

The 67-year-old priest had retired only last month, citing a neuromuscular disorder that affected his strength and motion. He spend his last nine years as pastor of Immaculate Conception in Towson, his childhood parish.

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

Tinder died late Friday, according to the archdiocese. In a statement, Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien called his death “a devastating blow to the Immaculate Conception community and an immeasurable loss for our entire Archdiocese.

“At all four parishes where he served, as well as in his various administrative positions, Monsignor Tinder served always with a joyful heart and with great love for the Lord and those he served,” O’ Brien said.

"Let us give thanks to the Lord for the priestly ministry of His servant, Dennis, and pray in these days of Advent that He will welcome him into the Kingdom for which he labored so generously."

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."

We extend our sincerest condolences to Monsignor Tinder's family and all affected by his loss.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

The Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, canon to the bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, was elected bishop suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles on Saturday.

The Annapolis resident is the first openly lesbian priest to be elected a bishop in the Episcopal Church, and is the first openly gay bishop chosen since the 2003 election of V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire brought a longstanding divide over homosexuality within the church out into the open.

“I’m very excited about the future of the whole Episcopal Church, and I see the Diocese of Los Angeles leading the way into that future,” Glasspool, 55, told delegates at the diocese’s annual convention. “Thanks be to our loving, surprising God. I look forward, in the coming months, to getting to know you all better, as together we build up the Body of Christ for the world.”

Ordained in 1981, Glasspool served in parishes in Philadelphia and Boston and St. Margaret’s in Annapolis before becoming canon to the bishops in 2001, according to the release. She has served on the diocese’s Standing Committee, the board of Episcopal Community Services of Maryland, and has been elected four times to head the deputation to General Convention.

She is one of two priests elected bishops suffragan for Los Angeles on Saturday. As suffragans, they are to assist the Right Rev. J. Jon Bruno, Bishop of Los Angeles.

The Right Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, bishop of Maryland, offered congratulations.

“This is a great day in the life of the Episcopal Church,” he said in a statement. “I have often said that the staff of the Diocese of Maryland is one of the finest in the Church. When one of its members is called to other important positions in the church, then all of us are honored. As canon to the bishops since 2001, Mary has distinguished herself as a faithful and gifted priest who is well prepared to assume the mantle of leadership incumbent upon a bishop.”

Glasspool’s election comes months after the Episcopal General Convention, the principal governing body of the church in the United States, voted to declare homosexuals eligible for any ordained ministry and began writing prayers to bless gay unions.

A smaller group has broken away to form the Anglican Church of North America, a conservative body seeking separate recognition within the worldwide Anglican Communion. The Vatican, meanwhile, has announced plans to make it easier for disaffected conservative Anglicans to join the Catholic Church.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (37)
        

Dr. Chris A. Brammer is pastor of Hampstead Baptist Church.

In the 1960’s there was a young school boy who refused to read the Bible in a classroom in a Baltimore public school. Rather than taking his turn to read the Bible, he threw the Bible out the window. Later in life, this self-proclaimed atheist had a change of mind and a change of heart. We had him speak at our church in 1993 to an overflow crowd.

Having personal knowledge of this man’s experience, I am not alarmed at the “new” atheism that is promoted by men such as Victor Stenger in his book, "The New Atheism," or Christopher Hitchens in "God Is Not Great." However, I am concerned about the promotion as to how it will damage young people who are seriously looking for answers and direction regarding life and eternity.

If the Baltimore Coalition of Reason wishes to have an affirmative answer to their question they will need to rephrase their thesis. Their question that is literally put before us is, “Are you good without God? Millions are.”

I would first need to ask, does anyone really know a million people, let alone know them all well enough to know that they are good people? We are not saying that they don’t do good things, but are they good people without God? Many good things have been done for selfish, self-serving, self-centered motives. These motives would certainly discredit any person’s good deeds from contributing to a reputation of being a good person; actually this person could be considered wicked -- for the religious or non-religious thinking person.

The question they should ask is, “Can you be good without believing in God?” The answer to that is an obvious yes. However, that does not mean that a person is good without God. This simply states that the good person doesn’t believe in God.

The non-religious person’s view of goodness without God in no way eliminates the existence of, and the need for God. Their belief simply means that they choose not to deal with the possible reality that his or her goodness is not solely theirs after all. There remains the possibility that there could be a God whom without, they would be without -- goodness and even life itself!

When you contemplate the matter, it is a rather arrogant thought that I am good because of my own goodness. God bless the atheist and the believer with increasing faith and humility.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
        

The Baltimore Hebrew Institute, the successor to Baltimore Hebrew University established this year at Towson University, is introducing itself to the greater community on Sunday with a lecture on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Lawrence H. Schiffman, chairman of the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, will present “Decoding Early Judaism: Reflections on the Contributions of Dr. Joseph Baumgarten” at 4 p.m. Sunday in Room 4110 of the new liberal arts building atTowson. The event is free and open to the public.

Baumgarten, a scholar at Baltimore Hebrew College and rabbi at Bnai Jacob Congregation, wrote extensively on the Dead Sea Scrolls. More than 800 texts were found in caves on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea during the 1940s and ’50s. Dating from the second century B.C. through the first century A.D., the scrolls include the oldest known remnants of the Old Testament, along with previously unknown psalms, commentaries and other writings.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Is Sarah Palin counting on a mass migration of Jews to Israel as a precursor to the end of the world?

Boston attorney Michael Felsen, treasurer of the secular Jewish communal organization the Workmen’s Circle, has an interesting piece on the subject in this week’s Baltimore Jewish Times.

Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and possible contender for the top job in 2012, has been in the media to promote her new memoir. Felsen picks up on comments by Palin on Good Morning America last week in response to a question about the Obama administration’s opposition to Israeli expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

“I disagree with the Obama administration on that,” the former Alaska governor told interviewer Barbara Walters. “I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon because the population of Israel is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.”

Felsen, critical of Palin, accuses her of “going rogue in the West Bank.”

More and more Jewish people flocking to Israel? What’s Palin’s source of information? Since 2002—the year in which the major wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union came to an end—there has been a consistent downward trend in immigration to Israel. By 2006, immigration was down to 1980s levels, during which time 9,000-24,000 people immigrated annually. And in 2008, the number was 13,681, representing the lowest ratio of immigrants to Israelis since the establishment of the State – 1.9 immigrants per 1000 residents.

Felsen says Palin’s “declaration that Jews will flock to Israel ‘in the days and weeks and months ahead’—plainly at odds with statistical trends—has an eerily familiar ring.”

"In fact, it’s entirely consistent with the belief of “Christian Zionists” that a mass ingathering of Jews to Israel is the necessary prerequisite to the battle of good against evil at Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ," he writes. "As Pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) puts it, 'We are racing to the end of time,' and more Jews (who, Christian Zionists believe, will either convert or face perdition) in all of historic Palestine are a key ingredient to fulfillment of that Biblical prophecy."

Felsen writes that the position of Palin and the Christian Zionists on the expanding settlements puts them at odds not only with the Obama administration, but every administration of the last 40 years.

"It’s troubling to think that Palin’s policy pronouncements on the Middle East might be even remotely motivated by apocalyptic beliefs," Felsen writes. "Expanding the settlements, if not a prelude to Armageddon, at a minimum significantly hampers, and perhaps even destroys any remaining prospect for a just and lasting peace between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples."

Read the story at jewishtimes.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (48)
        

A Roman Catholic cardinal has drawn on an unusual rebuke from the Vatican for saying that homosexuality is “an insult to God” and “transsexuals and homosexuals will never enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the retired head of the Vatican’s Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers, made the comments Wednesday to a conservative Web site, the British newspaper The Telegraph reports.

“People are not born homosexual, they become homosexual, for different reasons: education issues or because they did not develop their own identity during adolescence.

“Perhaps they aren’t guilty but by acting against the dignity of the body they will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The comments prompted a response from Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi, who said the Web site to which Lozano Barragan spoke should not be considered an authority on Catholic thinking “on complex and delicate issues such as homosexuality.”

Current Catholic teaching acknowledges that some people have innate homosexual tendencies but that homosexual acts are “disordered.”

The Telegraph also quotes a reaction from the Italian rights group Arcigay.

“It’s true, we won’t ever get into your heaven, which is a murky and unjust place.”

Read the story at telegraph.uk.co.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (63)
        

We posted on Tuesday about the launch of the Baltimore Coalition of Reason, a group of atheists, agnostics and others that is introducing itself to the area this week with a billboard campaign aimed at reaching out to nonbelievers while telling the religious among us that it's possible to be good without God.

Now there's a full story in Thursday's paper, an interesting part of which is the reaction among local religious leaders. We reached out to several in the course of reporting, and heard back from two.

"Of course we know that someone can be good without believing in God," said the Right Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, the Episcopal bishop of Maryland. "We don't believe in God in order to be good. We believe in God in order to connect with the holy within us, which helps us to love everyone in the world, even those who don't believe in God, even those who don't see the point of religion, even those who would harm us. As is it says in our Scriptures, 'God is love.' "

The Rev. Danny O'Brien, senior pastor of Grace Fellowship Church in Timonium, said the local campaign "underscores the notion that we have all been created with a yearning to be part of something bigger, something noble.

"As a follower of Christ, I would love for everyone to not only experience this yearning but to also know the creator who imbued us with it," O'Brien said. "But, being part of a free, pluralistic society is living in community with people who have different faith commitments or no faith commitment at all and to work together to find common ground in working toward the common good."

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)