Archbishop William D. Borders, who led the Archdiocese of Baltimore from 1974 to 1989, has entered hospice care, a spokesman said Wednesday.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien has asked area Catholics to pray for Borders, 96, who moved recently from the Mercy Ridge retirement community to the Stella Maris hospice in Timonium. He has been suffering from colon cancer.

Borders came to Baltimore after six years as founding bishop of the Diocese of Orlando -- a move, the Catholic Review notes, from the nation's youngest diocese to its oldest.

Succeeding Cardinal Lawrence J. Sheehan, he oversaw the division of the archdiocese into vicariates, reorganized Archdiocesan Central Services, and clarified and strengthened the role of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council and the Priests’ Council.

Nationally, he chaired the education committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and served on the Committee on Human Values and the administrative committee. He also chaired the Ad Hoc Committee for the Bicentennial of the U.S. Hierarchy.

Borders, who remained in the area after his retirement, had stayed active in ministry until recently.

His official biography from the Archdiocese of Baltimore follows, after the jump.

Born in Washington, Indiana, October 9, 1913, the son of Thomas Martin and Zelpha Ann (Queen) Borders, he attended Catholic elementary and high school before enrolling in St. Meinrad’s College and Seminary. Although he intended to be ordained for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, he responded to an appeal from Abp. Joseph F. Rummel of New Orleans for priests and seminarians in 1936. He transferred to the Archdiocese of New Orleans and completed his studies at Notre Dame Seminary, New Orleans. He was ordained a priest on May 18, 1940. His first assignment was to Sacred Heart Parish in Baton Rouge, where he became acquainted with a number of young adults who would soon be leaving to serve in the armed forces during the Second World War. These relationships influenced his decision to enlist in the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps in 1943, where he served as a battalion chaplain with the 362nd Infantry Regiment of the 91st Infantry Division in North Africa and Italy. He held the rank of major and was awarded the Bronze Star for Valor for carrying a wounded soldier to safety while under fire.

He returned to Louisiana after the war and in 1946 was sent to the University of Notre Dame to pursue a graduate degree. He received a M.S. in Education the next year and has held an unflagging commitment to Catholic education throughout his life. Upon completing his studies, he resumed parish ministry. In 1961 when the Diocese of Baton Rouge was created out of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, he became a priest of the new diocese. Two years later was named a domestic prelate with the title of Monsignor and in 1964 was appointed rector of St. Joseph Cathedral. During this period, he served as a diocesan consultor, director of seminarians, and as moderator for the diocesan councils of Catholic Men and Women. He is also recognized as one of the founders of St. Joseph Catholic Preparatory School, a minor seminary.

He was appointed by Pope Paul VI bishop of the newly erected Diocese of Orlando on May 2, 1968, and was consecrated on June 14, 1968. He devoted tremendous energy to implementing the directives of the Second Vatican Council in Orlando, with particular emphasis on collegiality and shared responsibility. Under his guidance, diocesan and parish councils, boards of education, and similar commissions were established. He also created a Social Services Board to correlate the work of already existing agencies. He developed a comprehensive educational program aimed at coordinating efforts in Catholics schools, campus ministry, and religious education. Social outreach centers were set up throughout the diocese to meet the needs of migrant workers and the poor.

He was appointed Archbishop of the Metropolitan See of Baltimore on April 2, 1974, succeeding Card. Lawrence J. Shehan (1898-1984), and was installed at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen on June 26, 1974. He received the Sacred Pallium on March 24, 1975. He led the Archdiocese for the next 15 years, where he oversaw the division of the Archdiocese into vicariates, reorganized Archdiocesan Central Services, and clarified and strengthened the role of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council and the Priests’ Council. On the national level he chaired the Bishops’ Committee on Education and served on the Bishops’ Committee on Human Values, the Administrative Board of the U.S. Catholic Conference, and the Administrative Committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. He also chaired the Ad Hoc Committee for the Bicentennial of the U.S. Hierarchy. He retired on April 10, 1989 and celebrated his 96th birthday on October 9, 2009.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

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

Five years ago, Terri Schiavo was pronounced dead more than 15 years after a heart attack put her into a persistent vegetative state. The battles leading up to that conclusion originated in a struggle between her husband Michael Schiavo and her parents Robert and Mary Schindler over who would determine proper care for her; they eventually managed to involve all three branches of the federal government, and hastened the political demise of Sen. (and Dr.) Bill Frist's once-promising Presidential candidacy.

As I watched the story unfold like a slow-motion car wreck, I was struck by the difficulty of the ethical issues involved. Does a feeding tube constitute "extraordinary measures" used to sustain life? Some liken it to the technological intervention of a ventilator, while others consider it basic nutrition and hydration which no-one could humanely deny. Did the widely disseminated videos of Schiavo reflect genuine intelligent response to people known to her or simply an involuntary reaction to external stimuli? Was Schiavo a living human being, or simply a metabolizing organism? Did she begin to rest in peace five years ago, or twenty?

The profound ethical questions raised in this case will continue to be debated, as well they should. But as long as they are unresolved the more pressing question for most of us is how a situation like Schiavo's is to be handled. Schiavo's autopsy revealed that she had indeed suffered massive and irreversible brain damage, but decisions about her care had to be made without this evidence. Absent a clear advance medical directive, does her husband make decisions for her? Do her parents have the right to trump her husband? Do the courts have the right to trump both? Congress?

Every day difficult medical decisions are made without certain knowledge about what will happen, or what would happen if a different path were taken. And every day these decisions are made among differences of opinion as what the “right” — or at least best — choice is. At the end of the day someone must make the call, and we as a society must have ways of ensuring that the appropriate person is making these decisions when the patient is unable to and has not authorized someone else to.

Among the most important things we learn from Scripture about the nature of marriage is that every wedding involves two funerals. “A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Jesus commented on this verse, “So they are no longer two, but one” (Matthew 19:6). When I officiate at weddings I always point out that from that day forward the people being married are entering into a change in the very essence of their being: no longer will either be himself or herself apart from the other. (I then sign the marriage license, and hope to snag a few crab balls on the way out. They then spend the rest of their lives working that out.)

What surprised me the most about the controversy over the Schiavo case was that the same people who ordinarily defend traditional understandings of marriage — people who in the course of pastoral ministry and teaching emphasize to couples (and their parents) the importance of “leaving and cleaving,” who encourage couples to work out their problems rather than running to their parents, who really do believe that the two become one — were the ones who wanted Terri Schiavo’s parents, rather than her husband, to make decisions about her medical care. No doubt if the roles had been reversed, they’d have been taking loud and strong stands on the right of a husband to make decisions for his disabled spouse, and decrying efforts by the government and her parents to remove the feeding tube.

Obviously it’s possible (and sometimes necessary) to petition a court to transfer decisionmaking authority from the party who would ordinarily hold it if that person can be demonstrated to be incompetent or malicious. Some argued the latter was the case for Michael Schiavo, although a more sympathetic reading of the situation would understand him as someone who came to terms with the loss of his wife and wanted to achieve closure for the both of them by allowing the completion of a long dying process. In the end he didn’t even make the decision; he petitioned the court to make the decision on his wife’s behalf according to her wishes as he understood them.

I’ve had the difficult privilege of walking alongside people as they made end-of-life decisions for their loved ones. Sometimes I haven’t agreed with their decisions personally. But I’m not the decider. If it’s true in other areas surely it’s true in this one: Sometimes people think they’re doing God’s will, but they aren’t. Yet amidst all the difficulty of making these decisions, and of caring for those making them, I rest secure in the knowledge that God is both infinitely just and infinitely merciful. As we approach Easter I’m reminded that no harm any of us does to another is beyond God’s capacity to redeem.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Catholicism, Church and State, Ethics, Guest Posts, Jason Poling, Law and Courts, People, Politics, Science
        

Word that the father of a dead Marine was ordered to pay court costs in his legal battle against Westboro Baptist Church after the Kansas-based hate group picketed his son's funeral has unleased a national outpouring of donations, Baltimore Sun colleague Robbie Whelan reports.

"I was appalled," said Sally Giannini, a 72-year-old retired bookkeeper from Spokane, Wash., told Whelan after contacting the newspaper about the court decision against Albert Snyder. "I believe in free speech, but this goes too far."

Whelan's story continues:

Living on a fixed income, Giannini said she could send only $10 toward the $16,510.80 that the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Snyder to pay to Fred Phelps, leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., an anti-gay group that travels the country picketing military funerals. The group says military deaths are God's punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality.

Snyder sued Westboro because its members waved signs saying "God hates fags" and "God hates the USA" at the 2006 funeral in Westminster of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who had been killed in Iraq. A federal jury in Baltimore awarded Snyder $11 million in damages in 2007, saying Phelps' group intentionally inflicted emotional distress on the family. The award was later reduced to $5 million, and eventually overturned on appeal.

As news of the order to pay some of the court costs spread through the news media and online, strangers were moved to send money and set up funds to support Snyder's court battle.

On Tuesday, Mark C. Seavey, new-media director for the American Legion, posted a message on his Legion-affiliated blog, The Burn Pit, urging readers to donate to the Albert Snyder Fund. The American Legion's message was picked up by conservative political blogger Michelle Malkin, who called the Westboro protesters "evil miscreants" and urged readers to donate.

"Regardless of how you feel about the merits of the Snyders' suit, the Snyders deserve to know that Americans are forever grateful for their son's heroism and for the family's sacrifice. We shouldn't stand by and watch them bankrupted," Malkin wrote.

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (50)
        

The Vatican is launching a legal defense that it hopes will shield the pope from a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to have him answer attorneys' questions under oath, the Associated Press reports.

Court documents obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press show that Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the pope has immunity as head of state, that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests weren't employees of the Vatican, and that a 1962 document is not the "smoking gun" that provides proof of a cover-up.

The Holy See is trying to fend off the first U.S. case to reach the stage of determining whether victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself for negligence for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about Roman Catholic priests who molested children.

The case was filed in 2004 in Kentucky by three men who claim they were abused by priests and claim negligence by the Vatican. Their attorney, William McMurry, is seeking class-action status for the case, saying there are thousands of victims across the country.

"This case is the only case that has been ever been filed against the Vatican which has as its sole objective to hold the Vatican accountable for all the priest sex abuse ever committed in this country," he said in a phone interview. "There is no other defendant. There's no bishop, no priest."

The Vatican is seeking to dismiss the suit before Benedict XVI can be questioned or documents subpoenaed.

Read the Associated Press story.

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

An Austrian priest avoids mention of Pope Benedict XVI in his Masses. A Philadelphia woman stops going to confession, saying she now sees priests as more flawed than herself. British protesters call for the pontiff to resign.

As the faithful fill churches this Holy Week, the Associated Press reports, many Roman Catholics around the world are finding their relationship to the church painfully tested by new revelations of clerical abuse and suggestions Benedict himself may have helped cover up cases in Germany and the U.S.

There are fears that for those whose commitment is already wavering, the scandal could be the final blow, and a growing chorus is clamoring for the church to embrace full transparency, take a hard line against pedophiles, and reconsider the rule of priestly celibacy.

"There's too many victims, and too much lying from the church about what really happened," said Martin Sherlock, a Catholic newspaper vendor in Dublin, Ireland.

Experts say the church is facing a crisis of historic proportions.

"This is the type of problem that arises really once in a century, I think, and it might even be more significant," said Paul Collins, an Australian church historian and former priest.

Collins, 69, said the abuse controversy was not mentioned by the priest in his own church near Canberra on Palm Sunday, but that the congregation discussed it afterward outside.

"People are outraged really, they're furious with the complete failure of the church's leadership and their view would be that we are led by incompetent people," Collins said.

That view was echoed by many Catholics interviewed around the world by The Associated Press in recent days, although the pope also had defenders.

One of them was John Ryan, a retired glue factory worker, who said he was impressed by the letter Benedict wrote to the Irish faithful last week in which he chastised Irish bishops.

"I was talking to my parish priest last weekend, and we were reading the pope's letter, and he told me: This pope is the most intelligent pope we've had in the last thousand years," said Ryan, 66, after a Mass in Dublin. "I couldn't disagree with that. I don't really think we could do better than with Benedict. I know they're supposed to be infallible, but I'd say most Catholics today would accept that nobody's perfect — not even the pope."

In staunchly Catholic Poland, the homeland of the late Pope John Paul II and a place where churches are packed even on work days, the top church authority called the pope the target of an "unprecedented media attack."

Allegations that Benedict concealed abuse "are totally groundless and it is hard to understand them in any other way than as a direct attack on the person and dignity of the pope," Henryk Muszynski, the Primate of Poland and Archbishop of Gniezno, said Sunday.

But across the Atlantic, Jasmine Co said her faith in the church was badly shaken.

The 56-year-old nurse, who recently moved to the U.S. from the Philippines, said she has stopped confessing her sins to priests, and is turning to God directly.

"I don't believe in confession to the priest because I don't know if that priest is more of a sinner than I am," Co said after attending a Palm Sunday service in central Philadelphia.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Nine suspects tied to a Christian militia that was preparing for the Antichrist were charged with conspiring to kill police officers, then attack a funeral using homemade bombs in the hopes of killing more law enforcement personnel, the Associated Press reports.

The Michigan-based group, called Hutaree, planned to use the attack on police as a catalyst for a larger uprising against the government, according to newly unsealed court papers. U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said agents moved on the group because its members were planning a violent mission sometime in April.

Members of the group, including its leader, David Brian Stone, also known as "Captain Hutaree," were charged following FBI raids over the weekend on locations in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. Seven people were arraigned in Detroit on Monday, and another one of Stone's sons, Joshua, is being sought.

Stone's ex-wife, Donna Stone, told The Associated Press before the arraignments that her former husband was to blame for pulling her son into the movement. She said David Brian Stone legally adopted her son, David Brian Stone Jr., who is among those indicted.

"It started out as a Christian thing," said Donna Stone, 44. "You go to church. You pray. You take care of your family. I think David started to take it a little too far."

The wife of another suspect told The Associated Press FBI agents took her husband's guns and searched their Ohio home for bomb-making materials. Kelly Sickles said her husband, Kristopher Sickles, 27, collected guns as a hobby.

"He loves guns. He had guns from like the Civil War, I mean, that he's never even shot," she said.

She denied he was involved in bomb-making or other kinds of violence.

"He doesn't even know how to make a bomb. We had no bomb material here," she said.

Hutaree says on its Web site that its name means "Christian warrior" and describes the word as part of a secret language that only a few people are privileged enough to know. The group quotes several Bible passages and states: "We believe that one day, as prophecy says, there will be an Anti-Christ. ... Jesus wanted us to be ready to defend ourselves using the sword and stay alive using equipment."

The site also features a picture on the site of 17 camouflaged men, all holding large guns, and includes videos of camouflaged men toting guns and running through wooded areas in apparent training exercises. Each wears a patch on the left shoulder with a cross.

According to investigators, the Hutaree view local, state, and federal law enforcement personnel as a "brotherhood" and an enemy, and planned to attack them as part of an armed struggle against the U.S. government.

The idea of attacking a police funeral was one of numerous scenarios discussed as ways to go after law enforcement officers, the indictment said. Other scenarios included a fake 911 call to lure an officer to his or her death, or an attack on the family of a police officer.

Once other officers gathered for a slain officer's funeral, the group planned to detonate homemade bombs at the funeral, killing scores more, according to the indictment.

After the attacks, the group allegedly planned to retreat to "rally points" protected by trip-wired improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, for what they expected would become a violent standoff with law enforcement personnel.

The indictment says members of the group conspired "to levy war against the United States, (and) to oppose by force the authority of the government of the United States."

The charges against the eight include seditious conspiracy, possessing a firearm during a crime of violence, teaching the use of explosives, and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction — homemade bombs. All seven defendants in court on Monday requested to be represented by the federal defender's office, and a bond hearing is set for Wednesday.

The arrests have dealt "a severe blow to a dangerous organization that today stands accused of conspiring to levy war against the United States," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday.

The raids on the group began over the weekend. FBI agents in Michigan swarmed a rural, wooded property Saturday evening in Adrian, about 70 miles southwest of Detroit. The same night in Hammond, Ind., law enforcement agents flooded a neighborhood, startling workers at a nearby pizzeria. In Ohio, authorities blocked off streets and raided two homes.

Outside Adrian, Heidi Wood, who lives near the property that was raided, said she hears gunshots "all the time" from near two ramshackle trailers that sit side-by-side. On Monday, a long gun leaned against a washing machine that sat in the yard, and on top of a nearby canister was another long gun.

Wood's mother, Phyllis Brugger, who has lived in the area for more than 30 years, said Stone and his family were known as having ties to militia. They would shoot guns and often wore camouflage, she said.

"Everybody knew they were militia," Brugger said. "You don't mess with them."

In Hammond, 18-year-old George Ponce, who works at a pizzeria next door to a home that was raided, said he and a few co-workers stepped outside for a break Saturday night and saw a swarm of law enforcement.

"I heard a yell, 'Get back inside!' and saw a squad member pointing a rifle at us," Ponce said. "They told us the bomb squad was going in, sweeping the house looking for bombs."

He said another agent was in the bushes near the house, and law enforcement vehicles were "all over." He estimated that agents took more than two dozen guns from the house.

In Ohio, one of the raids occurred at Bayshore Estates, a well-kept trailer park in Sandusky, a small city on Lake Erie between Toledo and Cleveland. Neighbors said the man taken into custody lived in a trailer on a cul-de-sac with his wife and two young children.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

In his first public comments since his release from prison, the man who shot Pope John Paul II says Pope Benedict XVI should resign over the Catholic Church's handling of clerical sex abuse cases, the Associated Press reports.

Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish man who was released in January nearly 29 years after wounding Pope John Paul II in Rome, has declared himself a messenger from God.

Agca told journalists in Istanbul on Monday that "I want the pope to resign not arrested," as he waved a Turkish newspaper reporting calls for the arrest of the pope. The press conference marked his first public comments since his release.

There are questions about Agca's mental health, the AP reports. Motives for the shooting of Pope John Paul remain a mystery.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

President Barack Obama plans to mark the start of Passover with a private Seder in the executive mansion, the Associated Press reports.

Obama and first lady Michelle Obama invited friends and White House aides to mark the Jewish holiday with a meal on Monday. The Obama aides started the tradition during 2008's primary campaign in Pennsylvania; Obama made a surprise stop to meet with staffers who were sharing an impromptu meal in a hotel basement.

The event continued last year at the White House with a small group of aides and advisers.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (36)
Categories: Christianity, Faith Practices, Holidays, Interfaith, Judaism, People, Politics
        

The Legionaries of Christ, a conservative religious order that enjoyed the favor of Pope John Paul II, has apologized to victims of sexual abuse by its founder, the Associated Press reports.

French bishops said in a letter to Pope Benedict XVI that they were ashamed of priests who committed "abominable acts" by sexually abusing children.

The Vatican has been on the defensive in recent days as criticism over the handling of some of the abuse probes in the United States and in Benedict's German homeland have threatened to engulf the papacy.

Benedict, in his previous role as a Vatican-based Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, directed the Holy See office that deals with sex allegations. Earlier, as Munich archbishop he was the top authority in the diocese in his German homeland.

The letter to Benedict from French bishops, and a Web site statement by the Legionaries of Christ, were the latest expressions of shame and regret from local churches or religious orders.

Both contained expressions of solidarity toward Benedict for his handling of abuse cases.

Abuse victims from the United States to Europe have been demanding that Benedict take responsibility for what he did or didn't do, both in his tenure in Germany and as the director of a Vatican policy that centralized the cases in Rome under a cloak of confidentiality.

French bishops said in their letter to Benedict that they are ashamed of priests who molested and raped children. The bishops said these "abominable acts" had "disfigured the church, wounded Christian communities and cast suspicion on all the members of the clergy."

But they also expressed solidarity with Benedict, saying the sexual abuse scandals were "being used in a campaign to attack you personally."

Thanking Benedict for his role in investigating abuse allegation was an international religious order which long had been held out as a model of staunch faith by the pontiff's late predecessor, John Paul II.

Leaders of the Legionaries of Christ said in a statement on its Web site that at first they couldn't believe the accusations against the late Mexican prelate Marcial Maciel, including molestation of seminarians and that he had a long relationship with a woman and fathered a daughter with her.

But they said it was thanks to an investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, under the direction of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict, that they were convinced the allegations were true.

"Yet again we express our pain and regret to each and every one of the persons who were harmed by the actions of our founder," the Legionaries' leadership said.

"We want to ask forgiveness from all those people who accused him in the past and who weren't given credence or who weren't listened to because in that moment we couldn't conceive of this behavior," the Legionaries said.

They expressed "gratitude" to Benedict for having sent five bishops to investigate the order around the world. The inspections is complete, and the order said it was "obediently" awaiting Benedict's instructions.

But while churchmen rallied to Benedict's side, the Holy See itself was again on the defense. Spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi reiterated the Vatican's insistence that Benedict didn't know about a Munich archdiocese decision to return a priest in therapy for pedophilia to pastoral work.

A report in Friday's New York Times said Ratzinger was copied in on a memo about the decision.

Lombardi circulated a statement issued by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising stating that the decision to return the priest to pastoral work was made by the vicar general of that time, Rev. Gerhard Gruber.

Two weeks ago, Gruber told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that he was in sole charge of staffing decisions during Ratzinger's tenure as archbishop, and that Benedict wouldn't have been aware of his decision because his case load was too big.

Victims worldwide have been demanding top diocesan bishops and Vatican officials take responsibility for frequent cover-ups of sexual abuse by clergy or the shuffling of molester priests from parish to parish.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

In another sign of the rapidly changing relationship between the Catholic Church and the Irish, a judge in Limerick has ruled that the city’s pubs may open on Good Friday.

District Court Judge Tom O’Donnell ruled that the city’s 110 pubs may open next Friday, the day on which Christians remember the crucifixion of Jesus, because the city is set to host a major Irish rugby match expected to draw tens of thousands of visitors, the Associated Press reports.

The ruling comes amid a growing crisis over abuse in the Irish church. Earlier this week, Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of a bishop accused of endangering children by failing to follow the church's own rules on reporting suspected pedophile priests to police.

AP correspondent Shawn Pogatchnik describes the import of the ruling:

Such a judgment would have been unthinkable in the Ireland of old, where the Catholic Church enjoyed unquestioned authority from the public and deference from the government. Commentators were quick to suggest that Thursday's judgment represented a watershed in the shifting relations between church and state in this rapidly secularizing land.

"This could be the beginning of the end of Good Friday, because now legislation will have to be changed," said a jubilant David Hickey, one of the Limerick pub owners who successfully sued the state for the right to do business like any other Friday. "The option should be given to let publicans open if they want to and close if they want to. Today was a huge decision in that direction."

His side argued that keeping pubs shut for the match between hometown favorites Munster versus Dublin-based rivals Leinster would represent an economic sin in Limerick, a city suffering from exceptionally high unemployment following the shock closure of its major employer, a Dell Computers plant. Accountants testified that keeping the bars closed could cost the city an estimated euro7.3 million ($10 million) in lost income.

District Court Judge Tom O'Donnell agreed, ruling that it also would encourage the estimated 26,000 rugby fans attending to disperse peacefully and rapidly after the match — straight into the watering holes of Limerick.

While the Limerick public appeared overwhelmingly behind the move, the city's Roman Catholic priests expressed sadness that only one of two "dry" holy days on the Irish calendar — the other being Christmas — was being turned into another long boozy weekend.

The Rev. Tony Mullins, administrator of the Limerick Diocese, said the judge's decision reflected "a changing society, where religious beliefs and the practice of one's faith is becoming more a matter for the individual."

He appealed to the Catholic faithful among locals and rugby tourists alike to choose to attend afternoon Masses in the city and avoid the drinking dens. "The challenge in this new emerging Ireland is for Catholics to give even stronger witness to their faith and belief," he said.

Several Franciscan friars who live in an impoverished housing project beside Limerick's rugby stadium said they might pray, protest and erect the Stations of the Cross — church artworks that illustrate the stages of Christ's crucifixion on Good Friday and resurrection on Easter — outside the gates as 26,000 rugby fans arrive.

Munster and Leinster are the two perennial powerhouses of Irish rugby with rabid fan bases.

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

Facing financial difficulties, Yeshivat Rambam is trying to sell its Park Heights Avenue campus, Baltimore Sun colleague Robbie Whelan reports.

Officials at the Orthodox Jewish day school said Thursday the school would remain open through the end of the academic year, helped in part by short-term financing from the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore. After this year, however, the school will have to relocate.

In a letter to parents this week, officials referred to "perennial rumors of insolvency" and said the sale of the campus at 6300 Park Heights Ave. was inevitable.

The school's "debt made cash flow very tight and negatively impacted mission execution," they wrote. "Much time and many resources were being diverted from building Rambam's future and were, instead, being used to finance past debt."

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

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

The Vatican on Thursday strongly defended its decision not to defrock an American priest accused of molesting some 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin and denounced what it called a campaign to smear Pope Benedict XVI and his aides, the Associated Press reports.

The Vatican spoke in reaction to a report that appeared Thursday on the front page of The New York Times.

Church and Vatican documents showed that in the mid-1990s, two Wisconsin bishops urged the Vatican office led by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now the pope — to let them hold a church trial against the Rev. Lawrence Murphy. The bishops admitted the trial was coming years after the alleged abuse, but argued that the deaf community in Milwaukee was demanding justice from the church.

Despite the extensive and grave allegations against Murphy, Ratzinger's deputy at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ruled that the alleged molestation had occurred too long ago and that Murphy — then ailing and elderly — should instead repent and be restricted from celebrating Mass outside of his diocese.

The official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone — now the Vatican's secretary of state — ordered the church trial halted after Murphy wrote Ratzinger a letter saying he was ill, infirm, and "simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood."

The New York Times story added fuel to a swirling scandal about the way the Vatican in general, and Benedict in particular, have handled reports of priests raping children over the years.

On Thursday, a group of clerical abuse victims staged a press conference outside St. Peter's Square in Rome to denounce Benedict's handling of the case and gave reporters church and Vatican documents on the case, the Associated Press reports.

Afterward, Italian police detained four American abuse victims for 2 1/2 hours because they didn't have a permit for the news conference and suggested they get a lawyer in case a judge decided to press charges, the victims said.

"We've spent more time in the police station than Father Murphy did in his life," Peter Isely, the Milwaukee-based director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said after his release.

Speaking at the earlier press conference, Isely called the Murphy case the most "incontrovertible case of pedophilia you could get."

"The goal of Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, was to keep this secret," he said, flanked by photos of other clerical abuse victims and a poster of Ratzinger. "We need to know why he (the pope) did not let us know about him (Murphy) and why he didn't let the police know about him and why he did not condemn him and why he did not take his collar away from him."

The Vatican issued a strong defense in its handling of the Murphy case. The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said there was no cover-up and denounced what it said was a "clear and despicable intention" to strike at Benedict "at any cost."

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, issued a statement noting that the Murphy case had only reached the Vatican in 1996 — some 20 years after the diocese first learned of the allegations. He also said Murphy died two years later — in 1998 — and that there was nothing in the church's handling of the matter that precluded any civil action from being taken against him.

In fact, police did investigate the allegations at the time and never proceeded with a case, Lombardi noted.

Murphy worked at the former St. John's School for the Deaf in St. Francis from 1950 to 1975. His alleged victims were not limited to the deaf boys' school. Donald Marshall, 45, of West Allis, Wisconsin, said he was abused by Murphy when he was a teenager at the Lincoln Hills School, a juvenile detention center in Irma in northern Wisconsin.

"I haven't stepped in a church for some 20 years. I lost all faith in the church," he told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday. "These predators are preying on God's children. How can they even stand up at the pulpit and preach the word of God?"

Church and Vatican documents obtained by two lawyers who have filed lawsuits alleging the Archdiocese of Milwaukee didn't take sufficient action against Murphy show that as many as 200 deaf students had accused him of molesting them, including in the confessional, while he ran the school.

While the documents — letters between diocese and Rome, notes taken during meetings, and summaries of meetings — are remarkable in the church officials' repeated desire to keep the case secret, they do suggest an increasingly determined effort by bishops, albeit 20 years later, to heed the despair of the deaf community in bringing a canonical trial against Murphy.

Ratzinger's deputy, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, though, shut the process down after Murphy wrote Ratzinger a letter saying he had repented, was old and ailing, and that the case's statute of limitations had run out.

"I have just recently suffered another stroke which has left me in a weakened state," he wrote Ratzinger. "I have repented of any of my past transgressions, and have been living peaceably in northern Wisconsin for 24 years. I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood."

"I ask your kind assistance in this matter," he wrote the man who would be pope within a decade.

According to the documentation, in July 1996, then-Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland sent a letter seeking advice on how to proceed with Murphy to Ratzinger, who led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 until 2005, when he was elected pope.

Weakland explained that he was writing because he had only recently learned that the reason Murphy stopped working in 1975 was because he had been accused of soliciting sex in the confessional, one of the gravest sins in canon law.

Weakland received no response from Ratzinger, and in October 1996 convened a church tribunal to hear the case.

In March 1997, Weakland wrote to the Vatican's Apostolic Signatura, essentially the Vatican high court, asking its advice because he feared the statute of limitations on Murphy's alleged crimes might have expired.

Just a few weeks later, Bertone told the Wisconsin bishops to begin secret disciplinary proceedings against Murphy according to 1962 norms concerning soliciting sex in the confessional, according to the documents.

But a year later, Bertone reversed himself, advising the diocese to stop the process after Murphy wrote to Ratzinger. Bertone suggested that Murphy should instead be subject to "pastoral measures destined to obtain the reparation of scandal and the restoration of justice."

The archbishop then handling the case, Bishop Raphael Fliss, objected, saying in a letter to Bertone that "I have come to the conclusion that scandal cannot be sufficiently repaired, nor justice sufficiently restored, without a judicial trial against Fr. Murphy."

Fliss and Weakland then met with Bertone in Rome in May 1988. Weakland informed Bertone that Murphy had no sense of remorse and didn't seem to realize the gravity of what he had done, according to a Vatican summary of the meeting.

But Bertone insisted that there weren't "sufficient elements to institute a canonical process" against Murphy because so much time had already passed, according to the summary. Instead, he said Murphy must be forbidden from celebrating Mass publicly outside his home diocese.

Weakland, likening Murphy to a "difficult" child, then reminded Bertone that three psychologists had determined he was a "typical" pedophile, in that he felt himself a victim.

But Bertone suggested Murphy take a spiritual retreat to determine if he is truly sorry, or otherwise face possible defrocking.

"Before the meeting ended, Monsignor Weakland reaffirmed the difficulty he will have to make the deaf community understand the lightness of these provisions," the summary noted.

The documents contain no response from Ratzinger.

The documents emerged even as the Vatican deals with an ever-widening church abuse scandal sweeping several European countries. Benedict last week issued an unprecedented letter to Ireland addressing the 16 years of church cover-up scandals there. But he has yet to say anything about his handling of a case in Germany known to have developed when, as cardinal, he oversaw the Munich Archdiocese from 1977 to 1982.

Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said in the statement that a lack of more recent allegations was a factor in the decision not to defrock Murphy and noted that "the Code of Canon Law does not envision automatic penalties."

After Murphy was removed from the school in 1974, he went to northern Wisconsin, where he spent the rest of his life working in parishes, schools and, according to one lawsuit, a juvenile detention center.

Previously released court documents show Weakland oversaw a 1993 evaluation of Murphy that concluded the priest likely assaulted up to 200 students at the school.

Weakland resigned as archbishop in 2002 after admitting the archdiocese secretly paid $450,000 to a man who accused him of sexual abuse.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)
        

Israel's Chief Rabbinate is warning Israeli citizens to be on the lookout for pirate matzah and Jews are worried, the Associated Press reports.

A week before the start of the holiday of Passover, Israeli police raided a warehouse containing a 7-ton stockpile of matzah with fake kosher certificates, according to a statement from the rabbinate.

"I can't believe that someone would do something like that," Roy Wolf, manager of a leading matzah factory in Israel, told the AP after receiving calls from concerned customers.

Matzah is the flat, unleavened bread Jews eat during the weeklong holiday instead of regular bread. Matzah is made of flour and water and must be baked according to strict religious instructions, under supervision of a rabbi, to ensure that it does not rise like bread.

The unleavened bread is a main feature of the weeklong Passover holiday, commemorating the biblical exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. The Bible says the fleeing people did not have time to bake ordinary bread, making do with flat, unleavened bread instead.

The rabbinate published color photos of the fake matzah packages ordering local rabbis to post the statement in synagogues and other prominent places to warn Orthodox Jews to avoid the faked product.

The rabbinate suspects that non-kosher flour was used to make the matzah. Eating such matzah on Passover would be the same, religiously, as eating bread.

Wolf said Wednesday that the affair "undermines the customer's trust. In Judaism, eating (leavened products) is considered a very serious prohibition. It's good that this was discovered."

Though only about a quarter of Israel's Jews are Orthodox, most do not eat bread during Passover, and about 80 percent conduct the traditional festive meal on the first night of the holiday, according to surveys.

Adding to the tensions over matzah was a report Tuesday on an Israeli TV station, predicting a shortage of the Passover staple during the holiday. Channel 10 TV said a fire in one of the matzah factories has cut production. The report showed one of the factories churning out boxes of matzah at full speed.

The manager told Channel 10 they were working "24 hours a day, six days a week." Orthodox Jews strictly ban working on the Jewish Sabbath.

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

A quarter of Republicans believe President Barack Obama might be the Antichrist, according to a Harris Poll released Wednesday.

In a survey by the same organization a year ago, Obama edged out Jesus as the figure most often named a hero by Americans. Now 24 percent of Republicans, and 14 percent of Americans overall, believe he might be the adversary of the Christ, Harris Interative reports.

Other findings in the online poll of 2,230 people conducted from March 1 through 8:

Two thirds of Republicans -- 67 percent -- and 40 percent of Americans overall, believe that Obama is a socialist.

A majority of Republicans -- 57 percent -- and 32 percent overall believe that Obama is a Muslim.

45 percent of Republicans, and 25 percent overall, believe that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president."

38 percent of Republicans, and 20 percent overall, say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did."

"The very large numbers of people who believe all these things of President Obama help to explain the size and strength of the Tea Party Movement," Harris Interactive says in a release.

The organization is drawing criticism for the manner in which it selected its sample and the way it framed the questions. ABC News polling director Gary Langer has posted a critique on his blog, followed by a lively discussion in the comments section.

Former Rudy Giuliani speechwriter John Avlon, whose polemic Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America inspired the poll, writes at the Daily Beast that the results "clearly [show] that education is a barrier to extremism:"

Respondents without a college education are vastly more likely to believe such claims, while Americans with college degrees or better are less easily duped. It's a reminder of what the 19th-century educator Horace Mann once too-loftily said: "Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge."

The full results of the poll, which will be released in greater detail tomorrow, are even more frightening: including news that high percentages of Republicans—and Americans overall—believe that President Obama is "racist," "anti-American" "wants the terrorists to win" and "wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one-world government." The "Hatriot" belief that Obama is a "domestic enemy" as set forth in the Constitution is also widely held—a sign of trouble yet to come. It's the same claim made by Marine Lance Corporal Kody Brittingham in his letter of intent to assassinate the President Obama.

More findings and methodology from Harris Interactive follows, after the jump.

A new book, Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America by John Avlon describes the large numbers of Americans who hold extreme views of President Obama. This Harris Poll seeks to measure how many people are involved. It finds that 40% of adults believe he is a socialist. More than 30% think he wants to take away Americans' right to own guns and that he is a Muslim. More than 25% believe he wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a world government, has done many things that are unconstitutional, that he resents America's heritage, and that he does what Wall Street tells him to do.

More than 20% believe he was not born in the United States, that he is "the domestic enemy the U.S. Constitution speaks of," that he is racist and anti-American, and that he "wants to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers." Fully 20% think he is "doing many of the things that Hitler did," while 14% believe "he may be the anti-Christ" and 13% think "he wants the terrorists to win."

These are some of the results of The Harris Poll of 2,320 adults surveyed online between March 1 and 8, 2010 by Harris Interactive.

The actual percentages of adults who believe these things are true are as follows:

He is a socialist (40%)
He wants to take away Americans' right to own guns (38%)
He is a Muslim (32%)
He wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one world government (29%)
He has done many things that are unconstitutional (29%)
He resents America's heritage (27%)
He does what Wall Street and the bankers tell him to do (27%)
He was not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president (25%)
He is a domestic enemy that the U.S. Constitutions speaks of (25%)
He is a racist (23%)
He is anti-American (23%)
He wants to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers (23%)
He is doing many of the things that Hitler did (20%)
He may be the Anti-Christ (14%)
He wants the terrorists to win (13%)
What Republicans, Democrats and Independents think

There are - no surprise here - huge differences between what Republicans and Democrats believe. Majorities of Republicans believe that President Obama:

Is a socialist (67%)
Wants to take away Americans' right to own guns (61%)
Is a Muslim (57%)
Wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one world government (51%); and
Has done many things that are unconstitutional (55%).
Also large numbers of Republicans also believe that President Obama:

Resents America's heritage (47%)
Does what Wall Street and the bankers tell him to do (40%)
Was not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president (45%)
Is the "domestic enemy that the U.S. Constitution speaks of" (45%)
Is a racist (42%)
Want to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers (41%)
Is doing many of the things that Hitler did (38%).
Even more remarkable perhaps, fully 24% of Republicans believe that "he may be the Anti-Christ" and 22% believe "he wants the terrorists to win."

While few Democrats believe any of these things, the proportions of Independents who do so are close to the national averages.

One big surprise is that many more Republicans (40%) than Democrats (15%) believe the president does what Wall Street and the bankers tell him to do.

Differences by education

These replies are also strongly correlated with education. The less education people have had the more likely they are to believe all of these statements. Consider these differences between those with no college education and those with post-graduate education:

He is a socialist (45% and 20%)
He wants to take away Americans' right to own guns (45% and 19%)
He is a Muslim (43% and 9%)
He was not born in the United States so is not eligible to be president (32% and 7%)
He is a racist (28% and 9%)
He is anti-American (27% and 9%)
He is doing many of the things Hitler did (24% and 10%).
After reviewing these findings, John Avlon comments, "These new numbers are shocking but not surprising - they detail the extent to which Wingnuts are hijacking our politics. This poll should be a wake-up call to all Americans about the real costs of using fear and hate to pump up hyper-partisanship. We are playing with dynamite by demonizing our president and dividing our country in the process. Americans need to remember the perspective that Wingnuts always forget - patriotism is more important than partisanship."

So what?

So what indeed! These responses recall a favorite saying of our founder Lou Harris that "when you don't want to publish a poll finding you dislike, you should get out of the business." The very large numbers of people who believe all these things of President Obama help to explain the size and strength of the Tea Party Movement, a topic that will be addressed in another Harris Poll in a few days time.

Methodology

This Harris Poll was conducted online within the United States March 1 and 8, 2010 among 2,320 adults (aged 18 and over). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents' propensity to be online.

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments. Therefore, Harris Interactive avoids the words "margin of error" as they are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.

Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys. The data have been weighted to reflect the composition of the adult population. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in the Harris Interactive panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

The results of this Harris Poll may not be used in advertising, marketing or promotion without the prior written permission of Harris Interactive.

These statements conform to the principles of disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (96)
        

Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation Wednesday of Bishop John Magee, a former papal aide who stands accused of endangering children by failing to follow the Irish church's own rules on reporting suspected pedophile priests to police, the Associated Press reports.

AP correspondent Shawn Pogatchnik writes that Magee apologized to victims of any pedophile priests who were kept in parish posts since he took charge of the southwest Irish diocese of Cloyne in 1987.

"To those whom I have failed in any way, or through any omission of mine have made suffer, I beg forgiveness and pardon," the 73-year-old Magee said in a statement.

The Vatican is on the defensive over ever-unfolding accusations that its leaders protected child abusers for decades in many countries, nowhere more so than Ireland, a predominantly Catholic country that once exported priests worldwide.

In Germany, where more than 300 former students in Catholic schools and choirs have come forward since January with abuse claims, the government announced Wednesday it will form an expert 40-member committee to investigate the allegations. It will be tasked with recommending legal reforms that could allow victims to pursue lawsuits and criminal complaints against church officials beyond Germany's current statute of limitations.

Irish society is still debating the merits of Saturday's unprecedented letter from Benedict apologizing for decades of unchecked child abuse by priests, nuns and other clerics. The letter criticized Irish bishops, promised a Vatican inspection of unspecified dioceses and religious orders in Ireland — but accepted no Vatican responsibility for promoting a culture of cover-up.

Benedict also has yet to accept resignation offers from three other Irish bishops who were linked to cover-ups of child-abuse cases in the Dublin Archdiocese, the subject of a government-ordered investigation that published its findings four months ago.

Magee, however, had been expected to resign ever since an Irish church-commissioned investigation into the mishandling of child-abuse reports in Cloyne ruled two years ago that Magee and his senior diocesan aides failed to tell police quickly about two 1990s cases.

The church and government suppressed publication of that report's findings until December 2008, when Magee faced immediate calls to quit from victims' rights activists and some parishioners. They accused him of ignoring an Irish church policy enacted in 1996 requiring all abuse cases to be reported to police.

Magee remained Cloyne bishop in name but transferred day-to-day responsibilities to his superior, Archbishop Dermot Clifford, in March 2009. Magee said Wednesday he submitted his resignation to the Vatican two weeks ago.

Cardinal Sean Brady, leader of Ireland's 4 million Catholics, offered prayers and praise for Magee.

"However, foremost in my thoughts in these days are those who have suffered abuse by clergy and those who feel angry and let down by the often-inadequate response of leaders in the church," Brady said.

Brady, a Vatican-trained canon lawyer, faces his own cover-up accusations. He has admitted collecting evidence in 1975 from two altar-boy victims of a notorious pedophile priest — but had both boys sign confidentiality agreements and never passed his information to police. That priest, Brendan Smyth, wasn't imprisoned until 1994 after molesting scores of children in Ireland and the United States. Last week, Brady said in his St. Patrick's Day sermon he felt ashamed.

Separately, the state investigators who reported on the Dublin cover-ups have turned their sole attention to Cloyne and are expected to report their own conclusions later this year. Magee said he would remain available to answer their questions.

The church's Cloyne report found that Magee and his diocesan deputies fielded complaints from parishioners about two priests from 1995 onward — but told the police nothing until 2003 and little thereafter. The report said Cloyne church authorities appeared solely concerned with helping the two priests, not protecting children of the diocese.

One priest, who was accused of molesting a younger priest when he was a teenager, was encouraged by Magee to resign. But the investigation found that the bishop shielded the abuser's identity from police — and considered such concealment "the normal practice" for the church.

The other priest, a career guidance counselor in a convent school, was accused by several teenage girls and grown women of molesting or raping them since 1995. One complaint came from a woman who had a consensual sexual relationship with the priest for a year — then saw him develop an intimate relationship with her 14-year-old son.

The church has declined to identify the two priests publicly by name. Neither has faced any criminal charges.

Magee, who was born in the Northern Ireland border town of Newry, served as a private secretary to three successive popes — Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II — from 1969 to 1982. He then served as the pope's master of ceremonies until 1987.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The prom's still off at a Mississippi high school that canceled it instead of letting a lesbian student bring her girlfriend, but a federal judge ruled Tuesday that the district's actions did violate the teen's constitutional rights, the Associated Press reports.

U.S. District Judge Glen H. Davidson refused the American Civil Liberties Union's demand to force the Itawamba County school district to put on the April 2 prom, AP correspondent Shelia Byrd writes. However, he said canceling it did violate 18-year-old Constance McMillen's rights and that he would hold a trial on the issue.

That would come too late for the prom to be salvaged at Itawamba Agricultural High School. Still, Kristy Bennett, ACLU Mississippi legal director, called the decision a victory.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the district to force it to put on the prom and allow McMillen to bring her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo. School officials said in U.S. District Court this week that they decided to cancel it because McMillen's challenge to the rules had caused disruptions.

The judge noted that McMillen has been openly gay since she was in the eighth grade and that she intended to communicate a message by wearing a tuxedo and escorting a same-sex date.

"The court finds this expression and communication falls squarely within the purview of the First Amendment," Davidson said.

As for McMillen, she said she was happy about the ruling but doesn't know what to expect when she returns to school. She attended classes a day after the March 10 decision to cancel the prom. But she said the hostility and comments from other students led her to miss school. She skipped class on Tuesday to go to the doctor and the fight is taking a toll, she said.

"My nerves are shot," she said.

District officials said in a statement that they were ready to get back to educating students.

Davidson said a private prom parents are planning will serve the same purpose as a school-sponsored one. He wrote that "requiring defendants to step back into a sponsorship role at this late date would only confuse and confound the community on the issue."

McMillen isn't sure if she'll go to the dance.

"I'm going to school tomorrow (Wednesday) and will get a feel of how everybody feels about me. That will help me make my decision about whether I'm going to the private prom," McMillen said. "I want to go because all my junior and senior class will be there, but I don't want to be somewhere I'm not welcomed."

Ben Griffith, the school district's attorney, said his clients were pleased with the ruling.

"What we're looking at now is the fact that the case is still on the docket for a trial on the merits," Griffith said.

McMillen first approached school officials about bringing her girlfriend in December, and again in February. Same-sex prom dates had been banned in the past, but she had hoped school officials would grant her request.

"I thought maybe the policy had been in place for a different reason," McMillen testified at a hearing on the ACLU lawsuit. "I wanted to let them know how it made me feel. I felt like I couldn't go to the prom."

She was told two girls couldn't attend together and she wouldn't be allowed to wear a tuxedo, court documents show. The ACLU issued a demand letter earlier this month and the district responded by canceling the event. McMillen, who lives with her grandmother and has a 3.8 grade point average, has kept her 16-year-old girlfriend out of the spotlight at the request of the girl's parents.

District officials said they felt not hosting the prom was the best decision "after taking into consideration the education, safety and well being of our students." Superintendent Teresa McNeece said it was "a no-win situation."

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (33)
        

 The Associated Press has an interesting feature about the Jewish origins of Curious George.

A new museum exhibit illustrates the development of the beloved children's character by a Jewish couple as they fled wartime Europe for the United States.

The story by Ann Levin begins:

Ever wonder why Curious George is so curious? Or why the monkey hero of the "Curious George" children's books is so fond of travel, so prone to mischief, yet always narrowly escapes disaster?

A new exhibit at New York's Jewish Museum suggests that curious readers need look no farther than the real-life adventures of the intrepid husband-and-wife team who created the beloved character.

H.A. and Margret Reys — he changed the name from Reyersbach — were German Jews living in Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion, increasingly concerned about finding safe haven. Two days before the Germans marched into Paris, they fled on bicycles carrying drawings for their picture books, including one about a mischievous monkey then called Fifi.

Curator Claudia Nahson explains that Hans and Margret created the monkey character that is always on the run while they themselves were on the run. The recurring motif of the monkey's narrow escape from danger is another autobiographical detail.

Twice in the months leading up to their escape, the couple was questioned by authorities suspicious of their German accents. Both times they were let off the hook when officials learned what they were really up to — making children's books.

While the exhibit touches on the harrowing conditions they endured on their four-month flight in 1940 from France to New York, it's more about the unusually long and fertile artistic collaboration between Hans and Margret, whose fiery personality is said to be the inspiration for George's insatiable curiosity and spunk.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

While the Roman Catholic church in Europe reels from a widening sex abuse crisis, the scandal that has plagued the U.S. church for nearly a decade is tapering off, the Associated Press reports.

The number of abuse victims, allegations and offending clergy in the U.S. dropped in 2009 to their lowest numbers since data started being collected in 2004, according to the latest annual report by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The price paid by the church has fallen, too, AP writer Eric Gorski reports. Dioceses and their insurers paid $104 million in settlements, attorneys' fees and other abuse-related costs in 2009, down from $376 million in 2008.

All told, the scandal's price tag for settlements and other costs has risen to more than $2.7 billion, according to estimates.

The numbers of cases were expected to decline, but the financial impact remains severe, Villanova University economics professor Charles Zech tells the AP.

"The U.S. Catholic Church cannot afford that right now, not the way the economy has been going, the hit taken on diocesan investments, and to some extent parishioner contributions," Zech said. "The church ... can't afford to be going on like this very much longer."

The latest annual report from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops identifies 398 allegations of abuse involving clergy from Catholic dioceses in 2009 — a 36 percent decline from 2008. Most cases involved preteen or teen males and incidents that were decades old, in keeping with past patterns.

The number of offenders dropped 32 percent, to 286. Most are dead, no longer in the priesthood, removed from ministry or missing, the report said.

Of the allegations reported in 2009, six involved children under the age of 18 in 2009.

The report said that about one-eighth of the allegations made in 2009 were unsubstantiated or determined to be false by the end of the year.

A companion survey that tracks how dioceses are complying with post-scandal reforms identified 21 cases of allegations against current minors in the year between July 2008 and June 2009. Nine allegations were against international priests visiting or serving in the United States. U.S.-born priests are scarce, and dioceses increasingly are looking overseas to staff their parishes.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

The Archdiocese of Baltimore will open an English-Spanish immersion program next fall at the Archbishop Borders School in Highlandtown, Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien announced Monday.

“Beginning this program in kindergarten and first grade will allow our students a longer sequence of instruction and gives them the best path for emerging from 8th grade fluent in both languages,” Cathy Marshall, Principal of Archbishop Borders School, said in a statement. “Younger children have the ability to develop language skills because they have better mental flexibly and improved listening and memory and listening skills.”

The announcement follows news this month that the archdiocese will close 13 of its 64 schools at the end of the academic year, part of a school consolidation that officials say is necessary to keep the system viable in the face of falling enrollments and rising costs.

At Archbishop Borders, English and Spanish are to be taught in kindergarten and first grade before expanding in future years to the entire school. The goal of the program is to produce graduates who are fluent in both languages.

At present, the school offers Spanish classes once a week in grades pre-K to four and twice per week for fifth-eighth graders.

The program is the first of several to be announced by the archdiocese as part of the consolidation. Future announcements are expected to designate schools to host Harvard University’s New American Academy educational model, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), Montessori and PRIDE (for students with special learning needs).

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (32)
        

Baltimore Sun colleague Ed Gunts has a story on the restoration of the historic Lloyd Street Synagogue:

Baltimore's historic Lloyd Street Synagogue was almost torn down in the late 1950s to make way for a parking lot. An architect was hired to prepare scale drawings of the structure, so there would be a record of it after it was gone.

Now the 1845 building is bustling with activity, after a $1 million restoration and the opening of a lower-level gallery designed to extend its reach as a center of education and tourism.

The Jewish Museum of Maryland, which now owns the synagogue, opened the gallery Sunday as the latest addition to its Herbert Bearman campus. Hundreds of visitors came to hear a concert in the sanctuary and tour "The Synagogue Speaks," a $300,000 exhibit that traces the history of the building at 11 Lloyd St., Maryland's first synagogue and the third-oldest synagogue still standing in the country.

The exhibit opening was the culmination of a series of events held to mark the end of the restoration project and the 50th anniversary of the museum, established in 1960 to save the synagogue from the wrecking ball. It followed a formal rededication of the building on Thursday that drew dignitaries from Maryland's religious, political and business communities, including Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Cardinal William Keeler, the former archbishop of Baltimore.

The synagogue is "a living testament to Baltimore's Jewish history and Maryland's history of religious freedom and tolerance," Rawlings-Blake said. "It is also a great attraction for heritage tourism."

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Pope Benedict XVI rebuked Irish bishops Saturday for "grave errors of judgment" in handling clerical sex abuse cases and ordered an investigation into the Irish church. But he laid no blame for the problem on the Vatican's policies of keeping such cases secret, the Associated Press reports.

In a letter to the Irish faithful read across Europe amid a growing, multination abuse scandal, the pope apologized to victims but doled out no specific punishments to bishops blamed by Irish government-ordered investigations for having covered up abuse of thousands of Irish children from the 1930s to the 1990s, AP correspondents Nicole Winfield and Victor L. Simpson write from Vatican City.

Ireland's main group of clerical-abuse victims, One in Four, said it was deeply disappointed by the letter because it failed to place responsibility with the Vatican for what it called a "deliberate policy of the Catholic Church at the highest levels to protect sex offenders, thereby endangering children."

"If the church cannot acknowledge this fundamental truth, it is still in denial," the group said.

The letter directly addressed only Ireland, but the Vatican said it could be read as applying to other countries. Hundreds of new allegations of abuse have recently come to light across Europe, including in the pope's native Germany, where he served as archbishop in a diocese where several victims have recently come forward. One priest suspected of molesting boys while the future pope was in charge was transferred to a job where he abused more children.

While a cardinal at the Vatican, Joseph Ratzinger penned a 2001 letter instructing bishops around the world to report all cases of abuse to his office and keep the church investigations secret under threat of excommunication. While the Vatican insists that secrecy rule only applied to the church's investigation and didn't preclude reporting abuse to police, Irish bishops have said the letter was widely understood to mean they shouldn't report the cases to civil authorities.

"You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry," Benedict said, addressing himself to Irish Catholics who suffered "sinful and criminal" abuse at the hands of priests, brothers and nuns and a botched response by their superiors.

"It is understandable that you find it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the church," he said. "In her name, I openly express the shame and remorse that we all feel."

Benedict used his harshest words for the abusers themselves, saying they had betrayed the trust of the faithful, brought shame on the church and now must answer before God and civil authorities.

"Conceal nothing," he exhorted them. "Openly acknowledge your guilt, submit yourselves to the demands of justice, but do not despair of God's mercy."

Benedict faulted their superiors, the Irish bishops, for having failed "sometimes grievously" to apply the church's own law which calls for harsh punishments for child abusers, including defrocking priests.

But he didn't rebuke them for having failed to report cases of abuse to police, saying only that serious mistakes were made and that now they must prevent future abuse and "continue to cooperate with civil authorities."

"I recognize how difficult it was to grasp the extent and complexity of the problem, to obtain reliable information and to make the right decisions in the light of conflicting expert advice," Benedict wrote.

"Nevertheless, it must be admitted that grave errors of judgment were made and failures of leadership occurred. And this has seriously undermined your credibility and effectiveness."

While the letter doled out no punishment for the bishops, the pope did order a Vatican investigation into some dioceses, seminaries and religious orders. Such a move is undertaken only when Rome considers a local church unable to deal with a problem on its own. The Vatican ordered such an "apostolic visitation" into U.S. seminaries after the U.S. clerical sex abuse scandal exploded in 2002.

The results of the Irish investigation could lead to further action.

Victims have been demanding that bishops resign, and three Irish bishops have offered to step down. Benedict hasn't accepted the resignations.

Asked why there were no punitive provisions in the letter, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi noted that the letter was pastoral, not administrative or disciplinary in nature, and that any further measures concerning resignations would be taken by the competent Vatican offices.

Cardinal Sean Brady, the top cardinal in Ireland who himself is under fire for not reporting a notorious abuser to police, welcomed the letter, as did archbishops from across Europe.

"Let us pray that the Holy Father's pastoral letter will be the beginning of a great season of rebirth and hope in the Irish Church," he said.

But One in Four, the victims' group, said a new church leadership is necessary in Ireland for the church to regain its credibility.

"In relation to the Irish bishops, the pope acknowledges their failings, but situates them in failures to adhere to cannon law," the group said. "There is no appreciation that the law of the land supersedes cannon law, and that the Catholic bishops, like any other citizens, are obliged to abide by Irish law."

Three Irish government-ordered investigations published from 2005 to 2009 have documented how thousands of Irish children suffered rape, molestation and other abuse by priests in their parishes and by nuns and brothers in boarding schools and orphanages. Irish bishops did not report a single case to police until 1996 after victims began to sue the church.

The reports have faulted the Vatican for sending confusing messages to the Irish church about norms to be followed and, in general, for what it called the absence of a coherent set of canon laws and rules to apply in cases of abuse.

In particular, the so-called Murphy report faulted the 2001 secrecy letter penned by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, who headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for a quarter-century before becoming pope, making him the most informed Vatican official about the global scale of clerical abuse.

In that role, he denounced the "filth" in the priesthood and initiated what has amounted to a crackdown on predatory priests, demanding a policy of zero tolerance from his bishops. As pope, he has met with American, Australian and Canadian victims of abuse, offering them comfort and apologies.

Nevertheless, reports emerged last week that while he was archbishop of Munich in the 1980s, Ratzinger approved therapy for a priest suspected of molesting boys. The priest was then transferred to a job where he later abused more children. He was convicted in a criminal trial. The archdiocese has said Ratzinger's then vicar general took full responsibility for the transfer.

Lombardi defended Benedict in his handling of the global abuse scandal and said anyone who knows the pontiff's background and history would know he has been a "witness for coherence and correctness" in confronting abuse and a "guide to overcome a past of silence."

Lombardi was peppered with questions about why the German-born pope didn't directly address the German scandal or take the opportunity of the letter to make a more sweeping commentary on the now-global dimensions of the scandal.

Lombardi acknowledged the other cases but said the Irish scandal was unique in its scope. But he said that obviously issues in the letter could be read to apply to other countries and individuals.

"You can't talk about the entire world every time," he said. "It risks becoming banal."

The head of the German bishops' conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, said the letter was a message also for Germany.

"The sexual abuse scandal in Ireland is not just an Irish problem, it is the scandal of the church in many places, it is the scandal of the church in Germany," he said.

A prominent German Catholic activist group, We Are Church, said it respected the pope's efforts with the letter.

But it faulted him for failing to address the fact that abuse is a global and structural problem for the church. "It would be good if there would be a mea culpa from him for all victims around the globe," said spokesman Christian Weisner.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

Pope Benedict XVI addresses Ireland on Saturday in a letter apologizing for the sex abuse scandal here — a message being watched closely by Catholics from Boston to Berlin to see if it also acknowledges decades of Vatican-approved cover-ups, the Associated Press reports.

AP correspondent Shawn Pogatchnik writes that the church is only beginning to come to terms with decades of child abuse in its parishes and schools. The scandals first emerged in Canada and Australia in the 1980s, followed by Ireland in the 1990s, the United States this decade and, in recent months, Benedict's German homeland.

Victims' rights activists say that to begin mending the church's battered image, Benedict's message — his first pastoral letter on child abuse in the church — must break his silence on the role of the Catholic hierarchy in shielding pedophile clergy from prosecution.

That includes abuses committed decades ago under the pope's watch, when he was Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger of Munich, as well as the pontiff's role in hushing up the scandals.

As leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger was responsible for a 2001 Vatican edict that instructed bishops to report all cases of child abuse to Vatican authorities under strict secrecy; it made no mention of reporting crimes to police.

"Is it not time for Pope Benedict XVI himself to acknowledge his share of responsibility?" said the Rev. Hans Kung, a Swiss priest and dissident Catholic theologian.

"Honesty demands that Joseph Ratzinger himself, the man who for decades has been principally responsible for the worldwide cover-up, at last pronounce his own mea culpa," Kung said.

Benedict, who served as archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982, has yet to speak about the hundreds of abuse cases emerging since January in Germany.

These include the Rev. Peter Hullermann, who was already suspected of abusing boys in the western German city of Essen when Ratzinger approved his transfer to Munich for treatment in 1980.

There, Hullermann was allowed contact with children almost immediately after his therapy began. He was again accused of molesting boys and was convicted in 1986 of sexual abuse. He was suspended this week for ignoring a 2008 church order not to work with youths.

Dirk Taenzler, director of the Federation for German Catholic Youth, said his members were appalled by the revelations of abuse in church-run schools and choirs — and wondered why the pope had yet to address his fellow Germans.

"Everyone is suffering from the church's bad image," Taenzler said. "It is an issue in every congregation and everyone is trying to cope."

Benedict's successor in Munich, Archbishop Reinhard Marx, said the pope's letter to Ireland "will of course affect us. The pope always speaks for everyone. It is not ... for specific groups or countries. That word will also be important for us."

Marx said the pope should not be expected to take responsibility for abuses committed by individual priests. "We expect the pope to take a stand on everything every time, but we are responsible for what happens here," he said.

In the United States, where several dioceses have been driven to bankruptcy amid abuse lawsuits, activists called on the pope to be candid about his own failings — and for bishops to be held accountable.

"So far the church hierarchy has been very short on accountability. They've had to be pushed to come clean about their responsibility for anything," said Dan Bartley, president of Voice of the Faithful, a Catholic lay group that lobbies for reform within the church. "He needs to call for any bishops involved in the Irish crisis to resign. But unfortunately we're not expecting that."

Ray Flynn, former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, said the pope has been slow to speak publicly about the church's abuse crisis because he lacks media savvy, not because he wants to stonewall critics or doesn't care about victims. "He is a very quiet, unassuming, non-pretentious man," said Flynn, who was mayor of Boston before he was posted to Rome.

"He's got to be transparent, forthcoming, right out front and point the finger where the blame is," he added. "I think the truth will set you free, and that's what people want."

Read the Associated Press story.

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

The German archdiocese led by the future Pope Benedict XVI ignored repeated warnings in the early 1980s by a psychiatrist treating a priest accused of sexually abusing boys that he should not be allowed to work with children, The New York Times reports.

“I said, ‘For God’s sake, he desperately has to be kept away from working with children,’ ” the psychiatrist, Dr. Werner Huth, told The Times on Thursday. “I was very unhappy about the entire story.”

From the front page story by Nicholas Kulish and Katrin Bennhold:

Dr. Huth said he was concerned enough that he set three conditions for treating the priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann: that he stay away from young people and alcohol and be supervised by another priest at all times.

Dr. Huth said he issued the explicit warnings — both written and oral — before the future pope, then Joseph Ratzinger, archbishop of Munich and Freising, left Germany for a position in the Vatican in 1982.

In 1980, after abuse complaints from parents in Essen that the priest did not deny, Archbishop Ratzinger approved a decision to move the priest to Munich for therapy.

Despite the psychiatrist’s warnings, Father Hullermann was allowed to return to parish work almost immediately after his therapy began, interacting with children as well as adults. Less than five years later, he was accused of molesting other boys, and in 1986 he was convicted of sexual abuse in Bavaria.

Huth tells The Times that he did not communicate directly with Ratzinger, and does not know whether the future pope knew of his warnings. Benedict’s deputy at the time has taken the blame for allowing Hullermann to return to work.

Read the story at nytimes.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The Church of Scientology, target of much negative publicity -- well, most of the time, but particularly in the last year -- is touting the launch Friday of its "Lifeboat to Haiti," a decommissioned Coast Guard icebreaker that its says will carry 175 tons of supplies to the earthquake-shattered nation.

From a release:

Two months after the earthquake in Haiti, with the U.N. and Haitian government predicting reconstruction will cost $11.5 billion and the rainy season fast approaching, hundreds of thousands of people remain homeless, living in IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps with no protection from the elements. With an international team of Scientology Volunteer Ministers on the ground in and around Port-au-Prince helping the nation rebuild, the Church of Scientology is sponsoring a “Lifeboat to Haiti”—an 896-ton former U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker sailing from Miami for Port-au-Prince with more than 175 tons of supplies. Cargo includes wood burning stoves donated by the charity of Lola Poisson Joseph, wife of the Haitian Ambassador to the U.S. as well as an ambulance, school bus and more than 20,000 meals-ready-to-eat (MREs). Community leaders, clergy, politicians and representatives of the Miami Haitian community, including Myron Rosner, Mayor of North Miami Beach, Andre Pierre, Mayor of City of North Miami, Daphne D. Campbell, RN, business executive and Haitian community leader running for Florida State House of Representatives will give the ship a send-off on Friday. The event will take place at the Miami Shipping Terminal, 3201 NW South River Drive in Miami.
The Church of Scientology has transported more than 450 medical professionals and 300 Volunteer Ministers to Haiti to support the doctors, nurses and EMTs on the ground.

The church says the cargo will include four pallets of wood-burning stoves, 60 tons of wood pellets, more than 20,000 meals ready to eat, an ambulance, a school bus and a pickup truck, tents, medical supplies, clothing, bedding, crutches and other items.

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

Lawmakers in Florida have voted to advance legislation to allow organized prayer at school-sponsored events. Josh Hafenbrack, a statehouse reporter for Baltimore Sun sister paper the Sun-Sentinel, has the story:

Students could lead prayers at school functions such as football games and the senior prom, under a controversial bill advanced by a Florida House committee Wednesday.

Despite objections from Democrats and civil liberties groups who called the effort "patently unconstitutional," the House PreK-12 Education Committee approved the prayer bill (HB11) on a largely party line, 10-3 vote.

Students would be allowed to initiate and lead prayers at assemblies and extracurricular events. The bill bans teachers, administrators and school boards from "discouraging or inhibiting the delivery of an inspirational message," which includes a "prayer or invocation."

Opponents said the prayer-in-school bill would subject students from minority religions, such as Jewish and Muslim students, to majority Christian views.

"When we start breaking down the First Amendment, it is the breaking of our fabric," said Rep. Kevin Rader, D-Delray Beach. Rader, who is Jewish, recalled sitting uncomfortably during team prayers while he was a high school student-athlete. "I remember it like it was yesterday."

Supporters, however, cast the bill as a free-speech issue for students who want to pray at school functions.

"That's the reason we have to have this bill – to protect people's First Amendment rights," said Rep. Greg Evers, R-Baker. "This is not necessarily a prayer bill. It's a rights bill."

Civil liberties lawyers said Wednesday the Legislature is venturing onto shaky constitutional ground. In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a student-initiated prayer broadcast at high school football games in Santa Fe, Texas, violated the First Amendment. Since then, lower courts have ruled that certain student-led prayers can pass constitutional muster as long as they weren't the product of an official school policy, creating a gray area.

The bill wouldn't allow prayer in the classroom, since it would only be allowed at "noncompulsory events." But David Barkey, a lawyer for the Anti-Defamation League, said it's also "unfair and divisive" that students could recite a prayer at a football game or school dance.

"That's a vital part of high school life for any kid, and there's intense peer pressure" to attend, he said. "Should they have to choose between going to a school dance and being subject to a religious exercise that's problematic for them?"

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)
        

The Vatican has begun formally investigating reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary at the Medjugorje shrine in southern Bosnia, the Associated Press reports.

An international commission of inquiry headed by Italian Cardinal Camillo Ruini — a top adviser to the late Pope John Paul II — has been formed to study the case and report back to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican said in a statement Wednesday.

The Medjugorje apparition has been disputed since 1981, when six youths said they had regularly seen visions of the Virgin there. In contrast to its reactions to Fatima in Portugal or Lourdes in France, the Vatican has been cautious about calling the sightings authentic, and neither Rome nor the local diocese has formally approved Medjugorje as an official shrine site.

But the lack of official recognition hasn't stopped the remote village 70 miles (110 kilometers) southwest of Sarajevo from thriving. More than 30 million faithful have visited the area since 1981.

One of the highest-ranking recent pilgrims was Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, who visited over New Year's, sparking a minor diplomatic incident since official church pilgrimages to Medjugorje are barred.

Schoenborn stressed that he traveled to the shrine in a private capacity. But he celebrated Mass there, met with the visionaries and granted several interviews afterward in which he called for Medjugorje pilgrims to receive the pastoral care — both physical and spiritual — that they would need there.

He also called the shrine a tree that "bore many fruits," in terms of vocations, conversions and rediscovery of faith.

His comments prompted the local bishop of Mostar, Monsignor Ratko Peric, to write him a letter Jan. 2, sharply criticizing his visit and stressing that his presence there was by no means a formal recognition of the apparitions. The local church has cast doubt on the claims, in part because one of the visionaries says the apparitions have continued monthly for over a quarter century.

Schoenborn met with the pope on Jan. 15 and wrote to Peric saying he regretted "if you have the impression that my pilgrimage to Medjugorje did a disservice to peace. Rest assured this was not my intention."

The Vatican spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the Vatican decided to launch the investigation based on a request from Bosnian bishops.

The current Vatican No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, wrote in 1996 that official pilgrimages to Medjugorje weren't to be organized at parish or diocesan levels since bishops from the former Yugoslavia had affirmed in 1991 that there was no way to confirm that "supernatural apparitions and revelations" had taken place.

Read the Associated Press story.

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

The Episcopal Church has confirmed the election of an Annapolis priest as the first openly lesbian bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The Rev. Mary Douglas Glasspool, who has served in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland since 1992, said Wednesday that she was “overjoyed and overwhelmed” by news that a majority of bishops and diocesan committees had approved her election as assistant bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles.

“And grateful,” she added. “I’m grateful to so many people, and to God.”

When she is consecrated in May, Glasspool will become the first openly gay bishop in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion since the 2003 election of V. Gene Robinson in New Hampshire brought a decades-long divide over homosexuality within the church out into the open.

Glasspool, 56, said she knows “not everyone rejoices” in her election, and pledged to “work, pray, and continue to extend my own hands and heart to bridge those gaps, and strengthen the bonds of affection among all people, in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Her confirmation is likely to further strain relations in a church that has lost members, parishes and dioceses over differences on homosexuality. One prominent traditionalist said he was “saddened but not surprised” by her confirmation.

“It is contrary to the teaching of Holy Scripture and the mind of the church catholic,” said the Rev. Kendall Harmon, canon theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina. “One would have hoped that at least the bishops would have waited until they were gathered at their upcoming House of Bishops meeting to discern prayerfully their response together. They instead sought to embrace a way of life which the church through the Bible has always understood to be forbidden.”

Bishop J. Jon Bruno of Los Angeles has supported Glasspool, who was elected with the Rev. Diane Jardine Bruce in December. They are the first female bishops in the Diocese of Los Angeles.

“I give thanks for this,” said Bruno, adding that he was grateful that the bishops and the diocesan committees had “demonstrated through their consents that the Episcopal Church, by canon, creates no barrier for ministry on the basis of gender and sexual orientation.”

Glasspool has served as canon, or adviser, to the Maryland bishops since 2001. She was rector of St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Annapolis from 1992 to 2001.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (54)
        

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

Over on the Midnight Sun blog the illustrious Owl Meat Gravy has offered a critique of some conventional understandings of St. Patrick. Although I'm a recovering political science major, I don't buy his imperial reading of the Saint -- "St. Patrick's missionary' work was a Roman-supported campaign, an act of political domination by Romano-Britons, probably with all the attendant brutality that comes with conversion at the point of a sword" -- because I think that picture better fits the practices of a later era when derivative hagiographies of Patrick (quite possibly conflating his life with that of another Christian leader, Palladius) were produced.

The institutional memory of Patrick, it seems, highlights his success in making disciples of Jesus especially among the women of Ireland. Patrick's own narrative (preserved in one of two extant works) recounts his kidnapping from Britain, six years of adolescence and young adulthood spent as a slave in Ireland, and a successful escape by boat prompted by a supernatural nudge toward the dock. But it doesn't stop there: Like the apostle Paul, who had a vision of a beckoning Macedonian, Patrick has a vision of an Irishman bearing a letter pleading with Patrick to come to Ireland.

A call to return to the place where he was enslaved, that’s no slouch as a plot turn (ineffective as it was in the third Matrix movie). And Patrick’s influence as an evangelist is rightly celebrated by those who celebrate that sort of thing.

But more significant, I think, and of more lasting importance, was Patrick’s firm stand against the Arian heresy that Jesus was and is not fully God. During Patrick’s time the Church came to agree on some vitally important theological tenets that survive in the great Creeds of the Christian Church and are still held today (at least on paper) by all Christian traditions. Although it is merely attributed to him, having been composed centuries later, the hymn known as “St. Patrick’s Breastplate” reflects the robust Trinitarian orthodoxy for which St. Patrick stood so firmly. Join me in enjoying a pint while you meditate on these words:

St. Patrick’s Breastplate
trans. C. F. Alexander, 1889

I bind unto myself today
the strong Name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, and One in Three.

I bind this day to me forever,
by power of faith, Christ’s Incarnation;
his baptism in the Jordan river;
his death on cross for my salvation;
his bursting from the spiced tomb;
his riding up he heavenly way;
his coming at the day of doom:
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power
of the great love of cherubim;
the sweet “Well done” in judgment hour;
the service of the seraphim;
confessors’ faith, apostles’ word,
the patriarchs’ prayers, the prophets’ scrolls;
all good deeds done unto the Lord,
and purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today
the virtues of the starlit heaven,
the glorious sun’s life-giving ray,
the whiteness of the moon at even,
the flashing of the lightning free,
the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
the stable earth, the deep salt sea,
around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
the power of God to hold and lead,
his eye to watch, his might to stay,
his ear to hearken to my need;
the wisdom of my God to teach,
his hand to guide, his shield to ward;
the word of God to give me speech,
his heavenly host to be my guard.

Against the demon snares of sin,
the vice that gives temptation force,
the natural lusts that war within,
the hostile men that mar my course;
of few or many, far or nigh,
in every place, and in all hours
against their fierce hostility,
I bind to me these holy powers.
Against all Satan’s spells and wiles,
against false words of heresy,
against the knowledge that defiles
against the heart’s idolatry,
against the wizard’s evil craft,
against the death-wound and the burning
the choking wave and poisoned shaft,
protect me, Christ, till thy returning.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,
the strong Name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, and One in Three.
Of whom all nature hath creation,
eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
praise to the Lord of my salvation,
salvation is of Christ the Lord.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Christianity, Culture, Holidays, Jason Poling
        

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has announced its opposition to the healthcare legislation to be considered by the House – a move that puts it odds not only with the Democratic majority, but with a group representing the nation’s Catholic hospitals.

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, the president of the conference, said Monday that bishops could not support the bill approved by the Senate in December because it omits the long-accepted ban on using federal dollars for abortion known as the Hyde Amendment.

“The American people and the Catholic bishops have been promised that, in any final bill, no federal funds would be used for abortion and that the legal status quo would be respected,” George said in a statement.

“However, the bishops were left disappointed and puzzled to learn that the basis for any vote on health care will be the Senate bill passed on Christmas Eve. Notwithstanding the denials and explanations of its supporters, and unlike the bill approved by the House of Representatives in November, the Senate bill deliberately excludes the language of the Hyde amendment. It expands federal funding and the role of the federal government in the provision of abortion procedures. In so doing, it forces all of us to become involved in an act that profoundly violates the conscience of many, the deliberate destruction of unwanted members of the human family still waiting to be born.

“What do the bishops find so deeply disturbing about the Senate bill? The points at issue can be summarized briefly. The status quo in federal abortion policy, as reflected in the Hyde Amendment, excludes abortion from all health insurance plans receiving federal subsidies. In the Senate bill, there is the provision that only one of the proposed multi-state plans will not cover elective abortions – all other plans (including other multi-state plans) can do so, and receive federal tax credits. This means that individuals or families in complex medical circumstances will likely be forced to choose and contribute to an insurance plan that funds abortions in order to meet their particular health needs.”

George’s statement comes days after the Catholic Health Association announced its support for the bill.

Chief executive Carol Keehan wrote on the group's Web site last week that although the legislation isn't perfect, it represents a "major first step" toward covering all Americans and would make "great improvements" for millions of people.

Keehan told the Associated Press that she believes the approach now in the bill would work just as well as the Hyde amendment to keep federal dollars from being used to pay for abortion.
"On the moral issue of abortion, there is no disagreement," she said. "On the technical issue of whether this bill prevents federal funding of abortions, we differ with Right to Life."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Brent Childers is executive director of Faith In America, a national nonprofit organization founded "to educate Americans about the harm caused when religious teaching is misused to justify prejudice, discrimination and violence against people based solely on their sexual orientation."

If the Texas State Board of Education moves to include mention of Phyllis Schlafly and Jerry Falwell in school textbooks, Faith In America hopes they will document how harmful their anti-gay actions have been to millions of gay and lesbian youth.

The Texas State Board of Education in a 10-5 party line vote approved some controversial alterations to what most students in the state and other areas of the country will be studying as history. After a public comment period, the board will vote on final recommendations in May.

According to an Associated Press story, it would mean not only increased favorable mentions of anti-gay activist Phyllis Schlafly but also more discussion about the anti-gay Moral Majority and Heritage Foundation.

The bigotry, prejudice and violence that has been justified and promoted by these so-called conservative groups has inflicted a horrific toll on the lives of gay and lesbian individuals, especially youth. It's unimaginable that millions of kids across this nation may now be taught that people who espouse and promote religion-based bigotry are to be looked upon as favorable.

History, time and time again, has judged such religion-based bigotry as harmful and unacceptable, whether such bigotry and prejudice was perpetrated toward American Natives, women or African-Americans. Apologies have been issued by the church and others for their role in promoting religion-based bigotry toward a minority group.

I recall how his own past bigotry and prejudice toward gay Americans was fostered and reinforced by Falwell and other anti-gay figures who for years used the religious and political arenas to promote the attitude that it's OK to be prejudiced and hostile toward gay and lesbian individuals.

Now, the Texas Board of Education is poised to use public school textbooks to give a stamp of approval to the religion-based bigotry and hostility that has been promoted by groups like the Moral Majority or Heritage Foundation. To put a positive spin on those group's prejudice and hostility toward gay Americans is no different than if someone proposed to rewriting history to portray segregation, racism or looking upon women as inferior in favorable terms.

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

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

The Anglican pastor and theologian Robert Farrar Capon notes, "Practically the only place where people now sing when they are cold sober is in church; and, to tell the truth, it sounds like it." Truth is, there aren't many places people sing together in any state of inebriation. Watch a European soccer match and you hear partisans lustily singing songs at each other, but here it seems that it's become too much to expect people to put their hands over their hearts at ball games, let alone sing along with the National Anthem. Sure, fans will sing along with their favorite artists at live concerts, but that doesn't really count.

Stop by an Irish bar on St. Patrick's Day, though, and you're in another world. I don't claim to be any sort of expert on the musical genre; I developed a mild appreciation back in college when two friends featured an "Irish Song of the Week" on a radio show otherwise devoted to political talk. While I was working in St. Paul one evening shortly after graduating, my boss handed me a twenty and told me I had to spend the evening somewhere other than the office; at the Half Time in St. Paul I met a duo that called themselves the Irish Brigade. (I didn't know at that point that pretty much every other band playing at Irish bars goes by that name as well.) Sean and Mike were either true Irishmen from Cork or able to sustain a convincing accent between sets as well as behind the microphone.

One evening I gave them a mix tape I'd put together featuring a mess of obscure singer-songwriters they'd never heard of but I thought they'd like. Apparently they thought I was the one on the tape, because the next time I saw them they asked me to play through a break between sets that weekend. I did so Friday night. I was not invited back on Saturday.

Still, every year as St. Patrick's Day approaches I dig out an old collection of Irish drinking songs entitled "Irish Drinking Songs" and spend a happy few days whistling "All For Me Grog" until my wife tells me to stop.

One benefit of Irish music is that it is very friendly to musicians. A guitarist who arrives for his gig early may find himself a couple of pints ahead of his audience by the time he begins his set. This is why God created the DADGAD tuning. Here's how it works:

1. Drop the lowest and two highest strings a full step, tuning them against the strings you didn't touch/

2. Hold down the G string behind the second fret with your index finger.

3. Basically do whatever you want at this point with the rest of your fingers as long as you keep them behind the second, fourth and fifth frets. If you want to play in E instead of D, put a capo behind the second fret.

St. Thomas Aquinas declared that a person may drink "usque al hilaritatem" -- to the point of cheerfulness. You'll find no place tomorrow night more cheerful or more tuneful than your friendly neighborhood Irish bar.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Christianity, Culture, Guest Posts, Jason Poling
        

Baltimore Sun staff writer Arthur Hirsch contributes a report:

With the meter running on decisions about choosing another Catholic school, more than 100 Cardinals Gibbons School parents and students streamed through a suite of rooms upstairs in the Fine Arts Building Monday evening to check out their options.

Representatives of 10 high schools from as far away as Annapolis and as close as a couple miles away had set up tables at the southwest Baltimore campus to dispense information and answer questions. With Gibbons scheduled to close in June as part of the Archdiocese of Baltimore's plan to reshape its school system, there were lots of questions, many concerning money in one way or another. Would their child's Gibbons scholarship continue? Would the archdiocese cover the difference between the Gibbons tuition and the new school?

"You'd think they have funds to offset this difference in the tuition," said Shawn Blum, of Halethorpe. His son, Riley, was on a full scholarship in his junior year at Gibbons and is now thinking about transferring to Mt. St. Joseph, the next nearest Catholic school, but at more than $11,000 in tuition, $1,000 more that at Gibbons. That could work, Blum said, but it might depend on the scholarship. In in the end it could mean Riley completes a senior year at Landsdowne High School, a nearby public school.

"A lot of students are really upset," Blum said. "Their parents had paid to go to Catholic school, then they have to finish it up at a public school."

More than 2,100 students in 13 schools are being displaced, and the archdiocese has promised each one a seat in a Catholic school, either among the 52 remaining archdiocesan schools or independent institutions. Applications are due on March 29, with admissions offices scheduled to mail out their decision letters on April 13.

"The Catholic schools stood up tonight and said 'We're here for you,' " said Mark D. Pacione, the archdiocesan associate director for Catholic schools planning.

Parents had come to gather information this time, not vent their anger as they had a week before as a standing-room crowd of some 1,000 packed the school auditorium to face archdiocesan officials. But it was clear that the wounds were still fresh, and there was still talk of ulterior motives in closing the boys' school, and of giving Gibbons another chance independent of the archdiocese.

"Why let this property sit, why not give us a shot?" said Richard Irwin, whose son, Garth, was graduating from Gibbons this year and whose younger son, Ryan, is in 10th grade and now weighing his choices. They were leaning toward Archbishop Curley, across town on the east side, not least because it's closest to Gibbons in size with about 600 students, roughly twice the Gibbons enrollment.

Ryan had scheduled a "shadow day" at Curley this week, meaning he would follow a Curley student through the day and get a feel for the place. He was scheduled to spend another day after that at Archbishop Spalding in Anne Arundel County, but if he liked Curley he'd probably stop the search right there.

"You knew everybody" at Gibbons, said Garth. "You weren't like a stranger walking around."

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

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

Those of us in the clergy have a strained relationship with the holidays enjoyed by the rest of our neighbors. Christmas for me is the day I recover from staying up late assembling Christmas presents after getting home from the midnight Christmas Eve service. Easter is the day I get up early to throw lamb in the oven so that after preaching I can serve it to several dozen international students, then go home and collapse. Thanks to an ill-considered dalliance with campaign politics in my youth I always associate July 4th with an all-day sweat earned by running up and down parade routes handing out stickers and candy. Even my birthday is usually a disappointment, falling as it does in the middle of December when nobody, including me, has time or mental bandwidth for anything but the demands of the holiday season.

So when my kids asked me last week what my favorite holiday was, I was glad to have St. Patrick’s Day coming up right around the bend. What’s not to like? I do have a wee bit of Irish ancestry on my father’s father’s mother’s side, not that any of us really needs it to celebrate March 17th. Like St. Patrick himself, I’m a good Trinitarian, so I offer my fellow In Good Faith readers these three points of appreciation. I begin with the fare.

The first beer I drank outside of a college dormitory was enjoyed at an Irish pub in Washington, DC after some friends and I had made the trek from New England to mark the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Sitting with a pint in one hand and a cigarette in the other, I felt very grown up as I assaulted my senses with dark, rich smells and flavors. At the time I wasn’t aware that Guinness is actually less alcoholic than the keg swill to which I had grown too quickly accustomed; I just knew that it was a beverage that demanded respect, if not a knife and fork.

Since that day I have had Guinness in innumerable cities, from the sacrilegious joint in San Antonio that served it in a frosted mug to the “English Pub” at Epcot where I was allowed to repair while my wife chaperoned her youth orchestra around Disney World. Invariably I find my fellow Guinness drinkers to be a genial lot, whether they be introverts or extroverts (or progress from one to the other after a few pints). Three months out of college, having fled to St. Paul to avoid the embarrassment of an involuntary separation from my employer in Baltimore, I found solace and fellowship in a few pints and a few games of pool (and indigestion in the White Castle burgers I threw down on the way home).

It’s a civilized beverage: Nobody does keg stands or funnels of Guinness, and you don’t find sticky half-drunk plastic cups of it lying around on Sunday morning. It’s a drink that commands your full attention, and rewards it in kind. The flavors are rich, but subtle; I’ve tried some celebrated Imperial Stouts and I find them obnoxious and overblown next to a humble pint of Guinness. The stuff makes for a nice stew with your leftover Easter lamb, too.

(I would be remiss if I neglected the ministrations of John Jameson & Sons, whose product joins hot tea with lemon and honey when I have a cold but nevertheless survives the association.)

This year’s innovation for me is corned beef: Specifically, that I’m making my own. A colleague raises beef cattle, and in January I happily took delivery of half a cow. The brisket is brining in my refrigerator as I write this, taking on as it has for the past week the contributions of salt, mustard seed, cloves, juniper berries, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, peppercorns and sodium nitrate. The last of these, I learned recently, is not easy to get without ordering it over the Internet, as it is useful not only for curing meats but for making gunpowder as well. (If I’m going to get the FBI to start a file on me, I can think of no nobler cause.)

On Wednesday I will rinse the brisket well and boil it with cabbage and potatoes, and serve it to my friends with Guinness and good cheer.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Christianity, Culture, Guest Posts, Jason Poling
        

The Vatican on Sunday denied that its celibacy requirement for priests was the root cause of the clerical sex abuse scandal convulsing the church in Europe and again defended the pope's handling of the crisis, the Associated Press reports.

Suggestions that the celibacy rule was in part responsible for the "deviant behavior" of sexually abusive priests have swirled in Europe, with opinion pieces in German newspapers blaming it for fueling abuse and even Italian commentators questioning the rule.

Much of the furor was spurred by comments from one of the pope's closest advisers, AP correspondent Nicole Winfield writes. Vienna archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn called this week for an honest examination of issues like celibacy and priestly education to root out the origins of sex abuse.

"Part of it is the question of celibacy, as well as the subject of character development. And part of it is a large portion of honesty, in the church but also in society," he wrote in the online edition of his diocesan newsletter.

His office quickly stressed that Schoenborn wasn't calling into question priestly celibacy, which Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed as recently as Friday as an "expression of the gift of oneself to God and others."

But Schoenborn has in the past shown himself receptive to arguments that a celibate priesthood is increasingly problematic for the church, primarily because it limits the number of men who seek ordination.

Last June, Schoenborn personally presented the Vatican with a lay initiative signed by prominent Austrian Catholics calling for the celibacy rule to be abolished and for married men to be allowed to become priests.

In the days following Schoenborn's editorial this week, several prominent prelates in Germany and at the Vatican shot down any suggestion that the celibacy rule had anything to do with the scandal, a point echoed Sunday by the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

"It's been established that there's no link," said the article by Bishop Giuseppe Versaldi, an emeritus professor of canon law and psychology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

"First off, it's known that sexual abuse of minors is more widespread among lay people and those who are married than in the celibate priesthood," he wrote. "Secondly, research has shown that priests guilty of abuse had long before stopped observing celibacy."

A report endorsed in 2004 by the U.S. Catholic bishops' conference, however, argued that an understanding of the problem of clerical sex abuse isn't possible without reference to both celibacy and homosexuality, since the vast majority of U.S. abuse cases were of a homosexual nature.

While stressing neither celibacy nor homosexuality causes abuse, the report said "The church did an inadequate job both of screening out those individuals who were destined to fail in meeting the demands of the priesthood, and of forming others to meet those demands, including the rigors of a celibate life."

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Egypt canceled the inauguration of a restored synagogue on Sunday citing objections to Israel's treatment of Muslims in the occupied territories as well as alleged excesses during an earlier ceremony, the Associated Press reports.

Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities spent seven months restoring the ruined Ben Maimon synagogue in Cairo's ancient Jewish quarter and had been set to unveil it to the press Sunday, a week after its rededication in a private ceremony, according to the AP.

Council head Zahi Hawass called off Sunday's event following criticism in the press of the synagogue's rededication ceremony, which was attended by Israeli diplomats as well the American ambassador. The cancellation was largely symbolic as the restoration is complete and the synagogue has been reopened.

"This cancellation comes after what happened during the inauguration by the Jewish community who engaged in activities considered provocative to the feelings of hundreds of millions of Muslims around world, including dancing and drinking alcohol," Hawass said in the statement.

He added that "Muslim sanctuaries in occupied Palestine are subject to aggression by the occupation authorities," citing in particular Israeli security actions on the Temple Mount, known as the Aqsa compound to Muslims, in Jerusalem.

Officials with Cairo's Jewish community had no comment about Hawass' statement.

The March 7 dedication ceremony at the synagogue, named after the 12th century rabbi and intellectual Maimonides, was closed to media and included half a dozen Egyptian Jewish families that long ago fled the country. No Egyptian officials attended the ceremony.

A group of about 11 Hassidic Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis also came to Cairo from the United States and Israel and sang at the event. Attendees also said toasts were made.

Egypt's Jewish community, which dates back millennia and at its peak in the 1940s numbered around 80,000, is down to several dozen, almost all of them elderly. The rest were driven out decades ago by mob violence and persecution tied in large part to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Egypt and Israel fought a war every decade from the 1940s to the 1970s until the 1979 peace treaty was signed.

Despite that treaty, Egyptian sentiment remains deeply unfriendly to Israel, and anti-Semitic stereotypes still occasionally appear in the Egyptian media.

On Tuesday, Culture Minister Farouk Hosny said his ministry was committed to restoring all 11 synagogues across Egypt, three of which have already been renovated. The best-known synagogue that of Ben Ezra, is located in Cairo's Christian quarter near a number of old churches and was restored years ago.

In his statement, Hawass lauded Egyptian efforts to restore its Muslim, Jewish and Christian sites without regard to their religion.

"This is proof of the religious tolerance in Egypt, while Muslim sanctuaries in Jerusalem and other Palestinian cities are subject to destruction and sequestration by Israel," he said.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Thousands of Indonesian Muslims on Sunday staged peaceful rallies in cities across the country to protest the coming visit of President Barack Obama, Agence France-Presse reports.

The French news agency reports that around 2,000 protesters from the hardline Muslim group Hizbut Tahrir, which aims to establish a Muslim caliphate, shouted "Islam united... will not be defeated. Reject Obama" and tore printouts of the American flag as they marched around the South Sulawesi capital of Makassar.

In Central Java's Solo city, AFP reports, another 500 of the group's supporters carried posters saying "Expel Obama.. leader of coloniser" and "America.. The Real Terrorists".

"There are two types of visitors, good and bad, group spokesman Nor Alam told AFP. "Obama is bad. He might be of a different skin colour from George Bush, but he still oppressed the Muslims."

"He might have grown up in Indonesia, but that's no basis for not rejecting him. He is a cruel figure, his hands are full of blood and he has no sympathy," he said.

Obama has been popular in the world's largest Muslim-majority country, where he spent several years of his childhood in the late 1960s.

Read the Agence France-Presse story.

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A group representing Catholic hospitals Saturday rallied behind President Barack Obama's health care bill ahead of a House vote in which anti-abortion lawmakers could play a decisive role, the Associated Press reports.

The chief executive of the Catholic Health Association, Carol Keehan, wrote on the group's Web site that although the legislation isn't perfect, it represents a "major first step" toward covering all Americans and would make "great improvements" for millions of people, the AP reports. The more than 600 Catholic hospitals across the country do not provide abortions as a matter of conscience.

The association's support widens a split among abortion foes on whether the bill goes far enough to prevent taxpayer funding for the procedure. House Democratic leaders are trying to turn that debate to their advantage as they press for a vote on Obama's bill as early as this coming week. Winning over even a handful of anti-abortion Democrats could help Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., find a clear path to the 216 votes she needs for passage.

Major anti-abortion groups, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Right to Life Committee, are adamantly opposed to the legislation, preferring stricter restrictions passed last November by the House.

Keehan said in an interview that she believes the approach now in the bill would work just as well to keep federal dollars from being used to pay for abortion.

"On the moral issue of abortion, there is no disagreement," Keehan said. "On the technical issue of whether this bill prevents federal funding of abortions, we differ with Right to Life."

The current legislation would allow private insurance plans operating in a new insurance marketplace to cover abortions, provided they do not use taxpayer funds. What makes that tricky is that many of the plans' customers would be receiving federal subsidies to help pay their premiums. So the legislation requires plans offering abortion coverage to collect a separate premium from their policyholders. Those separate checks would have to be kept in a different account from money for other health care services.

The abortion provisions Obama's bill are identical to those in the Senate legislation that passed on Christmas Eve. But the bishops and National Right to Life prefer the approach in the House bill.

The House bill prohibited any plans receiving federal subsidies from covering abortion. Women desiring insurance coverage for the procedure would have to buy a separate policy.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Germany's sex abuse scandal has now reached Pope Benedict XVI: His former archdiocese disclosed that while he was archbishop a suspected pedophile priest was transferred to a job where he later abused children, the Associated Press reports.

The pontiff is also under increasing fire for a 2001 Vatican document he later penned instructing bishops to keep such cases secret, AP correspondent Nicole Winfield writes.

The revelations have put the spotlight on Benedict's handling of abuse claims both when he was archbishop of Munich from 1977-1982 and then the prefect of the Vatican office that deals with such crimes — a position he held until his 2005 election as pope.

And they may lead to further questions about what the pontiff knew about the scope of abuse in his native Germany, when he knew it and what he did about it during his tenure in Munich and quarter-century term at the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Benedict got a firsthand readout of the scandal Friday from the head of the German Bishop's Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, who reported that the pontiff had expressed "great dismay and deep shock" over the scandal, but encouraged bishops to continue searching for the truth.

Hours later, the Munich archdiocese admitted that it had allowed a priest suspected of having abused a child to return to pastoral work in the 1980s, while Benedict was archbishop. It stressed that the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger didn't know about the transfer and that it had been decided by a lower-ranking official.

The archdiocese said there were no accusations against the chaplain, identified only as H., during his 1980-1982 spell in Munich, where he underwent therapy for suspected "sexual relations with boys." But he then moved to nearby Grafing, where he was suspended in early 1985 following new accusations of sexual abuse. The following year, he was convicted of sexually abusing minors.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, issued a statement late Friday noting that the Munich vicar-general who approved the priest's transfer had taken "full responsibility" for the decision, seeking to remove any question about the pontiff's potential responsibility as archbishop at the time.

Victims' advocates weren't persuaded.

"We find it extraordinarily hard to believe that Ratzinger didn't reassign the predator, or know about the reassignment," said Barbara Blaine, president and founder of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Already, the scandal was inching closer to Benedict after allegations of abuse surfaced at the prestigious choir that was led by his brother, Georg Ratzinger, from 1964 until 1994. Ratzinger has repeatedly said the sexual abuse allegations date from before his tenure as choir director and that he never heard of them, although he acknowledged slapping pupils as punishment.

The pope, meanwhile, continues to be under fire for a 2001 Vatican letter he sent to all bishops advising them that all cases of sexual abuse of minors must be forwarded to his then-office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and that the cases were to be subject to pontifical secret.

Germany's justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, has cited the document as evidence that the Vatican created a "wall of silence" around abuse cases that prevented prosecution. Irish bishops have said the document had been "widely misunderstood" by the bishops themselves to mean they shouldn't go to police. And lawyers for abuse victims in the United States have cited the document in arguing that the Catholic Church tried to obstruct justice.

But canon lawyers insisted Friday that there was nothing in the document that would preclude bishops from fulfilling their moral and civic duties of going to police when confronted with a case of child abuse.

They stressed that the document merely concerned procedures for handling the church trial of an accused priest, and that the secrecy required by Rome for that hearing by no means extended to a ban on reporting such crimes to civil authorities.

"Canon law concerning grave crimes ... doesn't in any way interfere with or diminish the obligations of the faithful to civil laws," said Monsignor Davide Cito, a professor of canon law at Rome's Santa Croce University.

The letter doesn't tell bishops to also report the crimes to police.

But the Rev. John Coughlin, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School, said it didn't need to. A general principle of moral theology to which every bishop should adhere is that church officials are obliged to follow civil laws where they live, he said.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

A lesbian student who wanted to take her girlfriend to her senior prom is asking a federal judge to force her Mississippi school district to reinstate the dance it canceled rather than let the couple attend, the Associated Press reports.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi on Thursday filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Oxford on behalf of 18-year-old Constance McMillen, who said she faced some unhappy classmates after the Itawamba County School District said it wouldn't host the April 2 prom, the AP reports.

"Somebody said, 'Thanks for ruining my senior year.'" McMillen said of her reluctant return Thursday to Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton.

The lawsuit seeks a court order for the school to hold the prom. It also asks that McMillen be allowed to escort her girlfriend, who also is a student at the school, and wear the tuxedo.

The district's decision Wednesday came after the ACLU demanded that officials change a policy banning same-sex prom dates because it said it violated students' rights. The ACLU said the district violated McMillen's free expression rights by not letting her wear a tux.

McMillen said she never expected the district to respond the way it did.

"A lot of people said that was going to happen, but I said, they had already spent too much money on the prom" to cancel it, she said.

McMillen said she didn't want to go back to Itawamba County Agricultural High School in Fulton the morning after the decision, but her father told her she needed to face her classmates.

"My daddy told me that I needed to show them that I'm still proud of who I am," McMillen told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "The fact that this will help people later on, that's what's helping me to go on."

The school board statement said it wouldn't host the event "due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events" but didn't mention McMillen. District officials didn't return calls seeking comment Thursday.

At least one supporter has offered to help McMillen and her classmates hold an alternate prom.

New Orleans hotel owner Sean Cummings told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson he was so disappointed with the school board's decision he offered to transport the students in buses to the city and host a free prom at one of his properties.

"New Orleans, we're a joyful culture and a creative culture here and, if the school doesn't change its mind, we'd be delighted to offer them a prom in New Orleans," he told the newspaper. "Concluding your high school experience should be a joyful one. One shouldn't conclude that experience with all their friends on a negative note."

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (21)
        

As allegations of sexual predation, some dating back decades, roil the Catholic church in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and other European countries, Vatican officials have insisted that such abuse is not specific to the church.

As if to affirm their assertion, two members of the Vienna Boys' Choir -- not affiliated with any church -- say they were sexually abused by their supervisors, a top Austrian newspaper reported Thursday.

The Der Standard daily reported on its Web site that the allegation was made by the choir alumni, now adults, the Associated Press reports.

One of the Austrian victims, a 33-year-old who now lives in Berlin, was cited as saying he and others were pressured to wash their genitals in the shower while supervisors watched, the AP reports. He also said an older choir member forced him to perform oral sex at one point while he was a member of the choir from 1985 to 1987.

Another member, described as a 51-year-old psychologist living in Munich who sang with group between 1966 and 1970, said a choir master rested his hand on his thigh for two hours while on a bus tour.

The newspaper cited choir officials as saying the allegations would be investigated.

The story follows a string of abuse allegations in Austria. It surfaced just hours after Catholic officials announced that three priests had been relieved of their clerical duties because of allegations of sexual misconduct with minors, and after one admitted to carrying out the acts of which he is accused.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Pope Benedict XVI met Friday with Germany's top bishop amid the spiraling abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church in his homeland, the Associated Press reports.

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch has apologized to German victims and promised to cooperate with prosecutors, the AP reports. But he and the Vatican have also insisted that sexual abuse of children isn't a problem specific to the Catholic Church.

Zollitsch met with the pope Friday morning in a previously scheduled audience at the Vatican. He planned a press conference later in the day.

At least 170 former students from Catholic schools in Germany have come forward recently with claims of physical and sexual abuse, including at an all-boys choir once led by the pope's brother.

Benedict hasn't commented on the German scandal himself. But he decried the sexual abuse of children as a "heinous crime" after he summoned Irish bishops to Rome last month to discuss the even more widespread scandal in the Irish church.

In addition to the cases in Germany and Ireland, three retired priests at a Catholic school in Austria were relieved of their clerical duties this week after allegations of physical and sexual abuse emerged. Two other priests in Austria have resigned amid similar allegations. And in the Netherlands, Catholic bishops announced an independent inquiry into more than 200 allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests at church schools and apologized to victims.

But of all the European scandals, the German abuse allegations are particularly sensitive because Germany is Benedict's homeland, where he served as archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982, and because the scandals involve the prestigious choir that was led by his brother, Georg Ratzinger, from 1964 until 1994.

Ratzinger has repeatedly said the sexual abuse allegations date from before his tenure as choir director and that he never heard of them, although he has admitted to slapping pupils as punishment.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The Vatican’s chief exorcist says the Devil is lurking in the very heart of the Roman Catholic Church, the Telegraph of London reports.

The Rev. Gabriele Amorth told La Repubblica newspaper in Rome that church sex abuse scandals in the United States, Ireland, Germany and other countries and the Christmas Eve assault on Pope Benedict XVI by a mentally unstable woman were proof that the Anti-Christ was waging a war against the Holy See, Telegraph correspondent Nick Squires writes:

"The Devil resides in the Vatican and you can see the consequences," said Father Amorth, 85, who has been the Holy See's chief exorcist for 25 years.

"He can remain hidden, or speak in different languages, or even appear to be sympathetic. At times he makes fun of me. But I'm a man who is happy in his work."

While there was "resistance and mistrust" towards the concept of exorcism among some Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI has no such doubts, Father Amorth said. "His Holiness believes wholeheartedly in the practice of exorcism. He has encouraged and praised our work," he added.

The evil influence of Satan was evident in the highest ranks of the Catholic hierarchy, with "cardinals who do not believe in Jesus and bishops who are linked to the demon," Father Amorth said.

Amorth also says that the 1973 horror classic The Exorcist gave a "substantially exact" impression of what it was like to be possessed by the Devil, Squires writes:

People possessed by evil sometimes had to be physically restrained by half a dozen people while they were exorcised. They would scream, utter blasphemies and spit out sharp objects, he said.

"From their mouths, anything can come out – pieces of iron as long as a finger, but also rose petals," said Father Amorth, who claims to have performed 70,000 exorcisms. "When the possessed dribble and slobber, and need cleaning up, I do that too. Seeing people vomit doesn't bother me. The exorcist has one principal duty – to free human beings from the fear of the Devil."

Read the story at telegraph.co.uk.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (59)
        

A federal appeals court in San Francisco upheld the use of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency, rejecting arguments on Thursday that the phrases violate the separation of church and state, the Associated Press reports.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected two legal challenges by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow, who claimed the references to God disrespect his religious beliefs, the AP reports.

"The Pledge is constitutional," Judge Carlos Bea wrote for the majority in the 2-1 ruling. "The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded."

The same court ruled in Newdow's favor in 2002 after he sued his daughter's school district for having students recite the pledge at school.

That lawsuit reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004, but the high court ruled that Newdow lacked the legal standing to file the suit because he didn't have custody of his daughter, on whose behalf he brought the case.

So Newdow, who is a doctor and lawyer, filed an identical challenge on behalf of other parents who objected to the recitation of the pledge at school. In 2005, a federal judge in Sacramento decided in Newdow's favor, ruling that the pledge was unconstitutional.

"I want to be treated equally," Newdow said when he argued the case before the 9th Circuit in December 2007. He added that supporters of the phrase "want to have their religious views espoused by the government."

In a separate 3-0 ruling Thursday, the appeals court upheld the inscription of the national motto "In God We Trust" on coins and currency, saying that the phrase is ceremonial and patriotic, not religious.

Reached on his cell phone, Newdow said he hadn't been aware that the appeals court had ruled against him Thursday.

"Oh man, what a bummer," he said.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)
        

The decision by a Rome high school to install condom vending machines has set off a storm in Italy, with the Catholic Church charging the move will encourage young people to have sex and Rome's mayor saying it sends the wrong message, the Associated Press reports.

But the Keplero high school vowed Thursday to go ahead with its experiment, billed as the first in the capital. While it's a relative novelty for Italy, schools in several other European countries have installed the machines in hopes of curbing teen pregnancy and HIV.

"This is not about stimulating the use condoms or intercourse," Antonio Panaccione, the school headmaster, told The Associated Press. "On the contrary, it's about prevention and education."

The school plans to install six vending machines as part of educating students about sexuality and HIV protection. The price: euro2 (US$2.70) for a pack of three, lower than market prices.

Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the pope's vicar for Rome, said the decision trivialized sex. He said it "cannot be approved by Rome's ecclesiastical community or by Christian families who are seriously concerned with the education of their children."

The newspaper of the Italian Bishops' Conference said Thursday that sex was being reduced to "mere physical exercise." The newspaper, L'Avvenire, lamented that young people these days have no spiritual guidance on sexuality, and that educators are more concerned with "the health and hygiene consequences of sex" than its moral implications.

Read the Associated Press story.

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Hundreds of Virginians were urging legislators to boycott the House of Delegates session on Thursday, when a Falls Church imam whom they accuse of condoning violence and defending terrorism was to deliver the opening prayer, The Washington Post reports.

Reporters Anita Kumar and William Wan – the latter a former Baltimore Sun colleague – write that Abdul-Malik and other leaders in the Muslim and interfaith communities say the accusations against him are false. Some background from The Post:

Two of the Sept. 11 hijackers briefly worshiped at his mosque, the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, and one of its former imams, Anwar al-Aulaqi, has been linked to accused terrorists and subsequently denounced by the mosque, one of the largest in the United States.

But Abdul-Malik was not affiliated with the mosque in 2001, when the Sept. 11 attacks occurred. In recent years, he has made statements following the arrest of Muslims on terrorism charges, arguing for due process, civil rights and fair sentencing.

"To try to cast me as someone who's a terrorist and closed-minded -- they picked the wrong guy,'' he said.

Soon after Sept. 11, Abdul-Malik was featured in paid ads produced by a group of national Muslim organizations, which denounced terrorism and the attacks. He has condemned terrorism and Osama bin Laden on "The O'Reilly Factor" and other television programs.

Still, letters and calls have poured into legislative offices since Friday, when a handful of concerned delegates let community activists know that Abdul-Malik was coming to Richmond.

"He's an apologist for people who commit criminal acts,'' said James Lafferty, chairman of the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force. The group, along with the Traditional Values Coalition and Act for America, will hold a rally outside the state Capitol on Thursday morning.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations put out a release on Thursday calling opponents to Abdul-Malik’s appearance “Islamophobes.” CAIR is asking supporters to contact Virginia House Speaker William J. Howell to thank him for “standing up to the Islam-bashers” and to contact delegates Adam Ebbin and Kaye Kory, the sponsors of the prayer, to thank them for “supporting religious diversity and inclusion in Virginia.”

“We cannot let a vocal minority of hate-mongers deny American Muslims their constitutionally-guaranteed right to take part in the political process,” CAIR National Legislative Director Corey Saylor said.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

John Flesher of the Associated Press has turned a nice profile of Rep. Bart Stupak, the Catholic lawmaker who has emerged as the leader of a small but crucial group of Democratic holdouts for tighter restrictions against abortion coverage in the health care overhaul.

Flesher's report is datelined West Branch, Mich.:

Shortly after entering Congress in 1993, Rep. Bart Stupak withstood President Bill Clinton's charm offensive and voted against free-trade legislation — an early display of the independent streak that has put him at odds with fellow Democrats many times since.

He's now the unofficial leader of a small but powerful bloc threatening to derail another Democratic president's cherished initiative: health care overhaul.

A dozen socially conservative Democrats say they won't support the legislation without a prohibition on paying for abortions with federal money. Stupak wrote a provision to their liking for a House bill approved last November, but the Senate replaced it with wording he considers unacceptable.

With the House closely divided, opposition from his faction could doom the measure and cripple Barack Obama's presidency. Stupak is under intense pressure not to let that happen. Some Democrats in his northern Michigan district are so angry that he's facing a rare — and long-shot — primary challenge.

Anti-abortion allies such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops want Stupak, a devout Roman Catholic, to dig in.

He insists he favors overhauling the nation's health care system, even describing it as a "pro-life" cause, and says a deal with House Democratic leaders is within reach.

"But you don't start compromising your values and principles based on some historical purpose, so 20 years from now people will look back and say, 'Wasn't that a sign of courage?'" he said. "They'll also say, 'Yeah, where were his principles and beliefs?' I think that lasts longer. When I leave Congress, I'm still going to have my integrity in place."

Connie Saltonstall, a former Charlevoix County commissioner who announced Tuesday she would oppose Stupak for the Democratic nomination, said his priorities were upside down.

"I believe that he has a right to his personal, religious views," said Saltonstall, 64. "But to deprive his constituents of needed health care reform because of those views is reprehensible."

Read the rest of the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)
        

The point of a caricature depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a dog was to show that artistic freedom allows mockery of all religions, including the most sacred symbols of Islam, the Swedish artist who created it tells the Associated Press.

Lars Vilks — the target of an alleged murder plot involving an American woman who dubbed herself "Jihad Jane" — said Wednesday that he has no regrets about the drawing, which is considered deeply offensive by many Muslims.

"I'm actually not interested in offending the prophet. The point is actually to show that you can," Vilks told the AP in Stockholm. "There is nothing so holy you can't offend it."

Vilks made his rough sketch showing Muhammad's head on a dog's body more than a year after 12 Danish newspaper cartoons of the prophet sparked furious protests in Muslim countries in 2006.

Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.

Vilks submitted the drawing to an exhibit at a Swedish cultural heritage center, which turned it down, citing security concerns. The issue went largely unnoticed until a Swedish newspaper printed the drawing with an editorial defending the freedom of expression.

The publication led to protests from Muslim countries, and briefly revived a heated debate in the West and the Muslim world about religious sensitivities and the limits of free speech.

It also led to numerous death threats against Vilks, who was temporarily moved to a secret location after al-Qaida in Iraq put a $100,000 bounty on his head in September 2007.

The 63-year-old artist told AP he has now built his own defense system, including a "homemade" safe room and a barbed-wire sculpture that could electrocute potential intruders. He also has an ax "to chop down" anyone trying to climb through the windows of his home, in southern Sweden.

"If something happens, I know exactly what to do," Vilks said.

Raed the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
        

Catholic authorities in Germany announced two major abuse investigations Wednesday — one into the renowned choir once led by Pope Benedict XVI's brother and another into what everyone, including the German-born pope, knew about the sexual and physical abuse of students, the Associated Press reports.

The Roman Catholic diocese of Regensburg in southern Germany appointed an independent investigator to examine the allegations of physical and sexual abuse that have engulfed the prestigious Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir, which was led by the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, the pope's older brother, from 1964 until 1994. So far, the sexual abuse allegations predate Ratzinger's term.

Diocese spokesman Jacob Schoetz said Nuremberg lawyer Andreas Scheulen would lead the inquiry and all charges will be investigated completely.

"The independent lawyer will thoroughly go through all existing legal papers, all court decisions and any information available," Schoetz said. "We expect to publish first results within the next two weeks."

In addition, the German Bishop's Conference said it would look into wider-ranging allegations across the country after more than 170 students at Catholic schools have said they were sexually abused decades ago. Other students have complained of physical abuse.

That investigation will also examine allegations of sexual abuse at the choir and look into what, if anything, Pope Benedict XVI himself knew in his previous position as the archbishop of Munich, prelate Karl Juesten told The Associated Press.

"We do not know if the pope knew about the abuse cases at the time," Juesten said. "However, we assume that this is not the case."

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)
        

The Dalai Lama blasted Chinese authorities Wednesday, accusing them of trying to "annihilate Buddhism" in Tibet as he commemorated a failed uprising against China's rule over the region, the Associated Press reports.

The Tibetan spiritual leader's angry comments appeared to signal his frustration with fruitless efforts to negotiate a compromise with China, the AP reports. However, he said he would not abandon talks.

China fought back, accusing the Dalai Lama of using deceptions and lies to distort Beijing's policy toward Tibet.

Beijing has demonized the Dalai Lama and accused him of wanting independence for Tibet, which China says is part of its territory. The Dalai Lama says he only wants some form of autonomy for Tibet within China that would allow Tibetan culture, language and religion to thrive.

The dispute turned violent two years ago, when anti-government protests erupted in Tibet and China cracked down on the region.

The police presence in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa has been heavy ever since, but was stepped up even more in recent days with rifle-toting police guarding intersections and demanding to see ID cards at checkpoints, hotel workers said.

"Because of the March 14 riot anniversary, police are patrolling in the streets every day, and they are conducting more checks," said Luo Wen, a receptionist at the Lhasa River Hotel.

In his annual address from exile in India to mark the 51st anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against China, the Dalai Lama said Chinese authorities were conducting a campaign of "patriotic re-education" in monasteries in Tibet.

"They are putting the monks and nuns in prison-like conditions, depriving them the opportunity to study and practice in peace," he said, accusing Chinese of working to "deliberately annihilate Buddhism."

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Supporters of the Cardinal Gibbons School are asking the Archdiocese of Baltimore if they can rent the property and coninue operating the landmark institution as an independent Catholic high school. But the day after an auxiliary bishop said Monday that church officials would consider all options, the archdiocese splashed cold water on the idea.

Cardinal Gibbons is the only high school among the 13 schools the archdiocese is planning to close at the end of the academic year.

"The thought that the existing school community could raise the kind of money necessary to run the school is not realistic and not being considered," archdiocesan spokesman Sean Caine said Tuesday. To suggest that the archdiocese is taking that idea seriously "would just be giving people false hope. And that's not fair."

Alumnus Tom Grace said Bishop Denis J. Madden sent a different signal on Monday.

"We don't care what Sean Caine says," he said. "Bishop Madden has clearly left the door open. He has told us he will talk again with the archbishop and get back to us. We are taking the man at his word."

Asked at a meeting packed with hundreds of students, parents and alumni Monday if the archdiocese would allow Gibbons to "go independent and rent the buildings at a minimal cost to the Archdiocese of Baltimore," Madden said that "all kinds of options are being considered." The response drew a standing ovation from the crowd.

"The bishop gave us a glimmer of hope," David Brown, the school's principal, said Tuesday. "With that glimmer out there, several of our most prominent alumni are working on the idea of Cardinal Gibbons operating as an independent Catholic school. I think there is growing support for the idea."

Read more at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The U.S.-based Christian humanitarian group World Vision has suspended operations in Pakistan after six employees were killed Wednesday in a grenade attack in Northwestern Pakistan, according to media reports.

"It was a brutal and senseless attack," Dean Owen, spokesman for the Seattle-based organization, told reporters. "It was completely unexpected, unannounced and unprovoked."

The victims were all Pakistani nationals. The Associated Press reports that suspected armed militants attacked World Vision offices in the small town of Ogi with grenades. World Vision had been helping survivors of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake.

The AP reports that extremists have killed other people working for foreign aid groups in Pakistan and issued statements saying such organizations were working against Islam, greatly hampering efforts to raise living standards in the desperately poor region. As a result, many groups have scaled back their efforts in the northwest or pulled out altogether.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

A Catholic school in Colorado is drawing criticism for its refusal to readmit the young children of a lesbian couple.

The school of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Boulder has informed the couple that the older of the two children may attend kindergarten next year, but may not advance to the first grade; the younger child may complete preschool, but may not advance to kindergarten.

News of the exclusions drew some two dozen protesters outside Mass on Sunday, Denver station KMGH-TV reports.

"God and Jesus would not allow discrimination in that way," Joellen Raderstorf told the ABC affiliate. At least one parishioner appeared to agree.

"I just feel the Catholic Church is a church that should be teaching acceptance and tolerance,” Juli Aderman-Hagerty said as she was leaving Mass. “I just don't think this is an example of that.”

Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput called it a “painful situation.”

“The Church never looks for reasons to turn anyone away from a Catholic education,” he wrote in a column for the Denver Catholic Register. “But the Church can’t change her moral beliefs without undermining her mission and failing to serve the many families who believe in that mission.”

Chaput drew attention during the 2004 presidential campaign when he told The New York Times that voting for a candidate such as John Kerry, a supporter of abortion rights, would be a sin, and Catholics who did so would be required to confess before they could take communion.

More recently, he decried a “spirit of adulation bordering on servility" among some Catholic supporters of President Barack Obama. “In democracies,” he said, “we elect public servants, not messiahs."

In his column, Chaput writes that the church does not claim that people of homosexual orientation are “bad,” or that their children are less loved by God.

“Quite the opposite,” he writes. “But what the Church does teach is that sexual intimacy by anyone outside marriage is wrong; that marriage is a sacramental covenant; and that marriage can only occur between a man and a woman. These beliefs are central to a Catholic understanding of human nature, family and happiness, and the organization of society. The Church cannot change these teachings because, in the faith of Catholics, they are the teachings of Jesus Christ.”

He writes that the policies of the Catholic schools exists to protect all parties, including homosexual couples and their children.

“Our schools are meant to be ‘partners in faith’ with parents,” he writes. “If parents don’t respect the beliefs of the Church, or live in a manner that openly rejects those beliefs, then partnering with those parents becomes very difficult, if not impossible. It also places unfair stress on the children, who find themselves caught in the middle, and on their teachers, who have an obligation to teach the authentic faith of the Church. …

“Most parents who send their children to Catholic schools want an environment where the Catholic faith is fully taught and practiced. That simply can’t be done if teachers need to worry about wounding the feelings of their students or about alienating students from their parents. … Persons who have an understanding of marriage and family life sharply different from Catholic belief are often people of sincerity and good will. They have other, excellent options for education and should see in them the better course for their children.”

The LGBT group Boulder Pride says on its Web site that it “extends its support to the family and stands in solidarity with the teachers at Sacred Heart who disagree with the Archdiocese's decision and with members of the community who are concerned that the Archdiocese has ignored the fullness of Catholic understanding of welcome and love, and instead is using a child to make a political point and not a theological one. All schools, private and public, should provide safe, welcoming learning environments to all students. A child should never be singled out to make a political statement.”

The Rev. Bill Breslin, pastor of Sacred Heart of Jesus, said the “core issue” is “our freedom and our obligation to teach about marriage and family life as our Faith teaches.”

“If parents see the cultural interpretation of what tolerance has become as more important than the teachings of Jesus, then we become unfaithful to the Lord and we lose the meaning of the beatitude, “Blessed are you when they insult you for My sake, for the Kingdom of Heaven is yours.” Many of Jesus’ teachings were not popular. In fact, He was crucified for His teachings.”

Breslin also questioned the parenting of the couple.

“Why would good parents want their children to learn something they don't believe in?” he asked. “It doesn't make sense. There are so many schools in Boulder that see the meaning of sexuality in an entirely different way than the Catholic Church does. Why not send their child there?”

Raderstorf, the protester, sees a double standard.

"I don't think they interview to see what parents are divorced or what parents are using birth control or other things that are against the teaching of the Catholic Church," she told KMGH.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
        

The pope's brother said in a newspaper interview published Tuesday that he slapped pupils as punishment after he took over a renowned German boys' choir in the 1960s, the Associated Press reports. He also said he was aware of allegations of physical abuse at an elementary school linked to the choir but did nothing about it.

The Rev. Georg Ratzinger, 86, said he was completely unaware of allegations of sexual abuse at the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir, part of a string of charges of sex abuse by church employees across Europe in recent days, the AP reports.

Responding to accusations that its policies encouraged silence about the problem, the Vatican said that the sexual abuse scandals in Germany and other countries were cause for anguish but its response has been prompt and transparent

The scandal sweeping church institutions in many European countries kept widening Tuesday.

In Austria, the head of a Benedictine monastery in Salzburg admitted to sexually abusing a child decades ago and resigned. Dutch Catholic bishops announced an independent inquiry into more than 200 allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests at church schools and apologized to victims.

The German abuse allegations are particularly sensitive because Germany is the homeland of Pope Benedict XVI and because the scandals involve the prestigious choir that was led by Georg Ratzinger from 1964 till 1994.

Last week, the Regensburg Diocese said a former singer at the choir had come forward with allegations of sexual abuse in the early 1960s. And across Germany, more than 170 students have claimed they were sexually abused at several Catholic high schools.

Ratzinger has repeatedly said the sexual abuse allegations date from before his tenure as choir director. Asked in the interview Tuesday whether he knew of them, Ratzinger insisted he was not aware of the problem.

"These things were never discussed," Ratzinger told Tuesday's Passauer Neue Presse German daily. "The problem of sexual abuse that has now come to light was never spoken of."

Jakob Schoetz, a spokesman for the Regensburg diocese, told The Associated Press that Ratzinger would not comment further on the issue.

There have also been reports of severe beatings by administrators at two primary feeder schools for the choir, one in Etterzhausen and one in Peilenhofen. One director, identified as Johann M., who headed the Etterzhausen school from 1953-1992, has been cited in several allegations as being particularly abusive.

Ratzinger said boys would open up to him about being mistreated in Etterzhausen.

"But I did not have the feeling at the time that I should do something about it. Had I known with what exaggerated fierceness he was acting, I would have said something," he was quoted as saying by the German paper.

"Of course, today one condemns such actions," Ratzinger said. "I do as well. At the same time, I ask the victims for pardon."

He said he had administered corporal punishment himself.

"At the beginning I also repeatedly administered a slap in the face, but always had a bad conscience about it," Ratzinger said, adding that he was happy when corporal punishment was made illegal in 1980.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

After nearly a week of saying that its decision to close 13 of its 64 schools at the end of the academic year was not reversible, the Archdiocese of Baltimore offered a glimmer of hope to students, parents and alumni at the Cardinal Gibbons School.

Facing a sea of red Monday night in the school auditorium, Bishop Denis J. Madden entertained a parent's question about whether the archdiocese would lease the property to the Cardinal Gibbons community and allow it to continue as an independent Catholic school.

"All kinds of options are being considered," Madden told the standing-room-only crowd, to thunderous applause.

"He really opened a door there," said local broadcaster Keith Mills, whose son, Nicholas, is president of the National Honor Society at the high school.

The meeting was one of three held simultaneously on Monday, the first opportunity for families from the affected schools to confront archdiocesan officials since the closings were announced last week. Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien did not attend any of the meetings; a spokesman cited a scheduling conflict.

Read more at baltimoresun.com.

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A Reform Jewish task force on intermarriage said Monday that the movement should do more to encourage mixed-faith couples to be active in Jewish life, including creating special blessings for major life events such as weddings and funerals, the Associated Press reports.

The panel proposed no changes in the movement's policy on officiating at interfaith weddings. Reform Judaism formally opposes the practice but allows each rabbi to decide, according to the AP.

Instead, the panel proposed other steps, including educating rabbis on how they can engage intermarried families, and creating blessings for ceremonies that involve a non-Jewish spouse.

Leaders of the task force said their two-year study represents a shift away from trying to prevent intermarriage and toward encouraging mixed-faith couples to create Jewish homes.

The intermarriage rate for U.S. Jews has been above 40 percent since at least the 1990s. Slowing the trend has become one of the biggest concerns of the Jewish community.

The Conservative and Orthodox movements bar rabbis from presiding at interfaith weddings. The Reconstructionist movement also opposes officiating but gives rabbis individual discretion.

The task force was created by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which represents nearly 2,000 Reform clergy. The report was released at an assembly in San Francisco. The Reform movement is the largest branch of American Judaism.

Read the Associated Press story.

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In Nigeria, Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell reports on the weekend slaughter of hundreds of Christians in Nigeria, apparently in reprisal for the killing of hundreds of Muslims in January.

His report opens:

The killers showed no mercy: They didn't spare women and children, or even a 4-day-old baby, from their machetes. On Monday, Nigerian women wailed in the streets as a dump truck carried dozens of bodies past burned-out homes toward a mass grave.

Rubber-gloved workers pulled ever-smaller bodies from the dump truck and tossed them into the mass grave. A crowd began singing a hymn with the refrain, "Jesus said I am the way to heaven." As the grave filled, the grieving crowd sang: "Jesus, show me the way."

At least 200 people, most of them Christians, were slaughtered on Sunday, according to residents, aid groups and journalists. The local government gave a figure more than twice that amount, but offered no casualty list or other information to substantiate it.

An Associated Press reporter counted 61 corpses, 32 of them children, being buried in the mass grave in the village of Dogo Nahawa on Monday. Other victims would be buried elsewhere. At a local morgue the bodies of children, including a diaper-clad toddler, were tangled together. One appeared to have been scalped. Others had severed hands and feet.

The horrific violence comes after sectarian killings in this region in January left more than 300 dead, most of them Muslim. Some victims were shoved into sewer pits and communal wells.

Sunday's bloodshed in three mostly Christian villages appeared to be reprisal attacks, said Red Cross spokesman Robin Waubo.

Nigeria is almost evenly split between Muslims in the north and the predominantly Christian south. The recent bloodshed has been happening in central Nigeria, in towns which lie along the country's religious fault line. It is Nigeria's "middle belt," where dozens of ethnic groups vie for control of fertile lands.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
        

One of two U.S. Baptist missionaries still held on kidnapping charges in Haiti was released Monday, but the group's leader remained in custody, the Associated Press reports.

Charisa Coulter was taken from her jail cell to the airport by U.S. Embassy staff more than a month after she and nine other Americans were arrested for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti after the earthquake.

Coulter, wearing a red tank top and sunglasses, declined comment as she quickly got into an SUV that took her to the airport.

Defense attorney Louis Ricardo Chachoute said she was released because there was no evidence to support the charges of kidnapping and criminal association. He predicted Laura Silsby, the leader of the Idaho-based missionary group, would be released soon as well.

"There are no prosecution witnesses to substantiate anything," Chachoute said.

Coulter, of Boise, Idaho, is a diabetic, and had medical difficulties during her confinement. She was treated at least once on Feb. 1 by American doctors after collapsing with what she said was either severe dehydration or the flu.

Silsby, the leader of the Idaho-based missionaries, was in another part of the city — in a closed hearing before the judge who had previously said he expected to release the two Americans.

Read the Associated Press story.

Associated Press photo of Laura Silsby

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Seeking to stem the exodus of Christians from the Holy Land, the Vatican on Monday launched an appeal for support for the ancient community, the Associated Press reports.

Pope Benedict XVI and other Catholic officials have addressed the plight of the region's dwindling Christian community frequently. The pontiff raised the subject during a pilgrimage last year.

The annual appeal announced Monday seeks to raise funds for schools, housing, scholarships and the restoration of Christian sites.

Members of the region's once large and prosperous communities are increasingly leaving conflict-ridden areas, including Iraq and the Palestinian territories, to seek better lives in the West. In Iraq and other countries, Christians have been specifically targeted with violence and other abuse.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that it would consider whether the hate-filled anti-gay protests held at a Maryland soldier’s funeral in Westminster were constitutionally protected by the First Amendment, Baltimore Sun colleague Tricia Bishop reports.

The 2006 funeral for Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq, drew members of the enthusiastically hateful Westboro Baptist Church, who picketed outside with signs reading “Fag troops” and “Thank God for dead soldiers.”

The 75-member, mostly interrelated congregation based in Topeka, Kansas, says soldiers are dying because of the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality. In 2007, a federal jury in Baltimore awarded Snyder’s father nearly $11 million in a civil suit against church leaders.

The amount was reduced to $5 million a few months later.

In September, a federal appeals court reversed the award, ruling that the protests were protected speech and that they did not violate the privacy of the Snyder’s family. The high court will review that decision.

Snyder's funeral was one of many picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church; our newsroom fax machine fills with notices of coming demonstrations. The Web address for the group is godhatesfags.com. The site once -- and might still, I can't be bothered to look -- ran an animation of murdered college student Matthew Shepard surrounded by flames with a counter purporting to track the number of days he had spent in Hell.

AP photo

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)
Categories: Christianity, Culture, Law and Courts, People
        

Note: Pakistani officials say an American member of al-Qaida was picked up in a raid in the southern city of Karachi, but have reversed earlier assertions that the detained man was U.S.-born spokesman Adam Gadhan, the Associated Press reports.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations says it welcomes reports from Pakistan that the American al-Qaida spokesman Adam Gadahn has been arrested.

“We welcome the reported arrest of Adam Gadahn and repeat the American Muslim community’s repudiation of all those who would promote or condone terrorism anywhere in the world," the Washington-based organization said in a statement.

In a release, CAIR speaks of its "innumerable condemnations of terror," and touts its online anti-terror petition drive “Not in the Name of Islam,” its television public service announcement and the fatwa it coordinated against terrorism and extremism.

Pakistani officials have identified the captured suspect as Abu Yahya Majadin Adam, but have given no details on his background or role within al-Qaida, the AP reports.

A name very close to that is listed on the FBI's Web site as an alias for Adam Gadahn, the 31-year-old spokesman who has appeared in several videos threatening the West since 2001. The resemblance created confusion among officials Sunday, leading them to believe that the suspect was Gadahn, an army officer and a senior intelligence officer said.

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

Mexico's Roman Catholic Church has published its harshest criticism to date of leftist Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, accusing his administration of botching issues ranging from crime to public transit, the Associated Press reports.

The church has often disagreed with Ebrard's Democratic Revolution Party.

An editorial published Sunday on the Archdiocese of Mexico's Web site accused Ebrard of "following the line set down by foreign groups" in approving legalized abortion and same-sex marriages, the AP reports.

Ebrard is viewed as a top contender in 2012 presidential race, and some leftists have accused the church of supporting more conservative rivals.

Mexican law prohibits the church from becoming involved in electoral politics.

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The brother of Pope Benedict XVI has told a newspaper he is willing to testify in the sex scandal rocking Germany's Catholic Church, even though he says he knows nothing about the alleged abuse of boys in a choir he later led, the Associated Press reports.

The Rev. Georg Ratzinger, in an interview published Sunday, also was quoted as saying by the Rome daily La Repubblica that there was "discipline and rigor" but no terror during his 30 years as head of the Regensburger Domspatzen choir in Germany, the AP reports.

The Regensburg Diocese said last week that a former singer came forward with allegations of sexual abuse in the early 1960s. The German newsweekly Der Spiegel has reported that therapists in the region are treating several alleged victims from the choir.

Ratzinger led the choir from 1964 till 1994.

The diocese has said it is hiring a lawyer to help it carry out a "systematic" clarification of abuse allegations.

A man who lived in the choir-linked boarding school until 1967 has contended that "a sophisticated system of sadistic punishments in connection with sexual lust" had been installed there. Der Spiegel quoted the man, Franz Wittenbrink, as saying it would be inexplicable that the pope's brother didn't know anything about it.

But Ratzinger says he knew nothing about any alleged abuse.

If German justice officials "ask me to give testimony, obviously I'd be very ready to do so, but I am not able to provide any information on any deed that could be punished, because I don't have any, I never knew anything about it," the former choir leader told La Repubblica.

"We're talking about another generation, of another generation than that of my years, and respect to the generation that leads the foundation and chorus now," the pope's brother told the paper.

Read the Associated Press story.

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A Baptist pastor in Tennessee says he now regrets that his church distributed a leaflet that describes the Catholic Eucharist as a plot hatched by the devil and the pope to control the world, Fox News reports.

As anti-Catholic material, Chick Publications’ 1988 tract “The Death Cookie” is fairly standard stuff. The comic book depicts a sinister-looking man giving a compliant leader the secret to dominating people: Creating a false religion. The adviser urges the leader – identified as “Papa” – to tell the people that his church is the only means to salvation, to keep them from reading the true scripture, and to direct them to worship a cookie transformed by his “holy helpers” into the flesh of God.

“The creation of the wafer god was the greatest religious con job in world history,” the tract reads. “This religious weapon is one of the most powerful idols ever created by man.”

The Rev. Thomas Flaherty, pastor of Holy Cross Catholic Church in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., called the tract distributed by neighboring Conner Heights Baptist Church “hate material.” He is concerned that it could incite violence in the town of 5,000.

“Basically, what they’re saying is our Eucharist is of the devil, that Catholicism is not of the Christian church,” Flaherty told foxnews.com.

“It’s a very dangerous world we live in,” he said. “But you can’t argue with ignorance, it’s not worth it.”

Pastor Jonathan Hatcher, who leads Conner Heights Baptist Church, tells foxnews.com. he has removed the leaflet from his congregation and will no longer distribute it.

“Looking back, I don’t think it was the right tract to give out,” Hatcher says. “I have some others that wouldn’t have been as offensive. But I will continue to spread the gospel — that’s what I’m called by Christ to do. I’m still going to hand out tracts, but not ‘The Death Cookie.’”

Hatcher says the incident has become a distraction to his 40 or so active members. He told foxnews.com that the pamphlet was intended to “share the differences” between Baptists and Catholics.

“Obviously we don’t believe alike, or else we’d be going to the same church,” he said. “But people try to make it out like we’re crusaders. I thank God for America, because we can all practice what we believe. We don’t spread the gospel out of hate; we spread it because we love people.”

Read the story at foxnews.com.

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Scores of Islamic students staged protests outside Jakarta's parliament and in at least three other major Indonesian cities on Friday against President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to the predominantly Muslim country, the Associated Press reports.

The students carried banners branding Obama as an enemy of Islam and an imperialist in downtown Jakarta as well as in the provincial capitals Padang, Yogyakarta and Surabaya, the AP reports.

They also threw shoes at large pictures of Obama's head. An Iraqi journalist was sentenced to a year in prison for throwing his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush during a news conference in Baghdad in 2008.

Protest organizer Ahmad Irhamul Fikri, spokesman for the Coordinating Board for Campus Proselytizing Institute, said bigger rallies will be staged next Friday in more Indonesian cities ahead of Obama's March 20-22 visit.

Such demonstrations of hostility toward Obama are rare in Indonesia, where he enjoys widespread popularity because he spend part of his childhood in Jakarta while his mother was married to his Indonesian stepfather.

Local government officials allowed business people to erect a statue of a 10-year-old Obama in a Jakarta park in December. But it was shifted last month to a nearby elementary school that he attended after more than 50,000 people supported a Facebook campaign against it and court action was threatened.

Obama is expected to sign the statue's pedestal while in Jakarta.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Associated Press religion writer Rachel Zoll has a story about the faith elements of the upcoming wedding and marriage of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky.

Clinton has a Christian background; Mezvinsky is Jewish. Zoll writes about the interfaith issues ahead, beginning with the wedding:

The bride and groom have a range of choices, including conversion or a melding their two traditions into one ceremony.

The talk has been strongest in the Jewish community. There has been more rejoicing than lamenting about this interfaith union that brings a former first daughter a step closer to the fold.

Still, they wonder: Has Chelsea been searching for a rabbi along with her gown?

"If they had a Jewish wedding officiated by a rabbi, I think that would be something really positive," said Ed Case, president of InterfaithFamily.com, which supports Jewish outreach to interfaith couples. "It's so important for the Jewish community to have interfaith couples engaging in Jewish life."

Chelsea Clinton grew up attending Methodist church with her mother. Bill Clinton has been close to his pastor in Arkansas, but the Southern Baptist Convention rebuked him years ago over his support for gay relationships and abortion rights.

Last year, Chelsea, a graduate student at Columbia University's School of Public Health, was seen attending Yom Kippur services with Marc at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, the flagship for Conservative Judaism, according to news reports.

Zoll describes “the high rate of intermarriage” as “an obsession in the Jewish community, which has struggled with how welcoming it should be to mixed-faith couples:”

Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben of Kehillath Israel, a Reconstructionist congregation in Pacific Palasades, Calif., said even if Chelsea doesn't have a Jewish wedding or convert, she should still be considered part of the community.

"There are Jews by birth and Jews by choice and Jews by association," said Reuben, who has officiated at interfaith weddings for years and presided at the 2003 vow renewal of Ozzy Osbourne and his wife, Sharon, whose father is Jewish. "She's marrying into the Jewish family."

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

An ever-widening sexual abuse scandal involving Germany's Roman Catholic Church spilled into the heart of Pope Benedict XVI's homeland Friday when a former member of a boy's choir led for 30 years by his brother said he was a victim, the Associated Press reports.

A spokesman for the Regensburg diocese, home to the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir, said the abuse was alleged to have occurred before the Rev. Georg Ratzinger took over the choir in 1964, the AP reports.

A former singer came forward with allegations church employees had sexually abused him in the early 1960s, spokesman Clemens Neck said.

Ratzinger, the pope's brother, took led the choir, comprosed of around 500 boys and young men, from 1964 until his retirement in 1994.

Ratzinger told public radio Bayerischer Rundfunk on Friday he did not know of any abuse cases at the choir and another spokesman for the diocese, Jakob Schoetz, insisted the known cases of abuse did not happen during Ratzinger's tenure.

"The cases that are known to us at this time did not take place during his tenure," Schoetz wrote.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Malaysia won't prosecute two Muslims who pretended to be Roman Catholics and took Communion, a decision a church leader said Thursday undermines peace at a time of rising tensions between Muslims and the country's religious minorities, the Associated Press reports.

"The lack of action would appear to legitimize" the behavior of the two men, Archbishop Murphy Pakiam of Kuala Lumpur told the AP.

More details from the AP:

In a letter dated Feb. 12, Malaysian police informed the church that, following instructions from the attorney-general's office, "no further action" would be taken against two men who were investigated after they pretended to be Christians and took Communion at a church service to research a magazine article.

The monthly Malay-language Al-Islam magazine indicated the men spat out the Communion wafers because they took a photograph of it partially bitten. Catholics believe the Communion wafer is transformed into the body of Christ by the priest during the Mass.

The crime of causing religious disharmony carries a prison term of up to five years in Malaysia. The government stance in this case is likely to draw comparisons with its strong defense of Islam, the faith of the majority of Malaysia's 28 million people.

Most prominently, it has vigorously defended a ban on non-Muslim use of the word Allah. Court rulings in inter-religious disputes generally favor Muslims, and government leaders have on occasion publicly brandished daggers, vowing to defend Islam with their blood.

Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail said in a statement that he decided not to prosecute the two men because "they did not intend to offend anyone. It was an act of sheer ignorance."

He added that he had made the same decision in "previous cases where the circumstances were quite similar involving other religions."

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Facing rising costs and falling enrollments, the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore will close 13 of its 64 schools at the end of the academic year, officials have told employees and families, displacing 2,152 students and 325 teachers, staff and administrators. Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien says all displaced students will be given a spot in a different school. It is not clear how many employees will lose their jobs.

The Baltimore Sun has produced a package on the school reorganization:

13 Catholic schools to shut in June

Gibbons community stunned by closing

Neighborhood wonders what will happen

For one Baltimore school, sighs of relief

Public schools expect to be able to take in students

Letter to parents from Achbishop Edwin F. O'Brien

What they're saying about closings

School reorganization map

Histories of schools to close

Photo gallery: Catholic schools to close

Photo gallery: Prominent Cardinal Gibbons alumni

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The conflict that led to hundreds of demonstrators to walk out of Mass at a Dutch church on Sunday appears to have come to an end.

Dutch gay rights groups have called for a halt to protests against a Catholic church southwest of Amsterdam after it said it would no longer seek to bar homosexuals from taking communion, the Associated Press reports.

The Sint-Jan church in Den Bosch -- also called 's-Hertogenbosch -- says it will leave it up to believers to decide whether they are ready to receive communion, according to the AP.

Activists staged the walkout to protest a priest’s refusal to give communion to a practicing homosexual. Having foreseen the protest, the church had decided not give communion to anyone.

The dispute began in February, when a priest in nearby Reusel refused communion to the openly gay carnival prince of that nearby town, the BBC reports. Same-sex marriage is legal in the Netherlands, but the Catholic Church teaches homosexual acts are sinful.

Thanks to BankStreet for sending us a heads-up.

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

The Archdiocese of Baltimore will close 13 schools at the end of the academic year, officials told employees and parents Wednesday.

They include one high school, the Cardinal Gibbons School in Morrell Park, and 12 K-8 schools. While the archdiocese extends from Baltimore and surrounding counties to Western Maryland, all of the schools to close are in Baltimore or Baltimore County.

The city will lose 9 of its 30 Catholic schools. They are St. Bernadine Catholic School, Fr. Charles Hall Catholic Elementary and Middle School, St. Katharine School and Queen of Peace Cluster, Mother Mary Lange Catholic School, Our Lady of Fatima School, St. Rose of Lima School, Shrine of the Sacred Heart School, St. William of York School and Cardinal Gibbons.

The county will lose four of its 27 schools. They are Ascension School in Halethorpe, St. Clare School in Essex, Holy Family School in Randallstown and Sacred Heart of Mary School in Dundalk.

The reorganization will displace 2,152 of the system's 22,700 students. Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien has promised a spot at a different school to every student displaced by a school closing.

The reorganization will also displace 325 teachers, administrators and staff. It is not clear how many will lose their jobs in the system.

Read more at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

The Cardinal Gibbons School, an academic and athletic powerhouse in Baltimore for decades, will close at the end of the academic year, according to an announcement on a Facebook page devoted to the school.

"At the end of this academic year, the Cardinal Gibbons School will close it's [sic] doors," the posting read. "As part of the consolidation of the Catholic School System, the Archdiocese of Baltimore has chosen CG as one of the schools to close. James Cardinal Gibbons, pray for us. Live Jesus in our hearts, forever."

Archdiocesan officials met with principals Wednesday morning to detail a reorganization plan expected to include several school closings. Students are being sent home with letters describing the fates of their schools.

Gibbons, which opened in 1962, has been suffering declining enrollments and increasing costs for much of the past decade. It was built on the former site of St. Mary's Industrial School, which Babe Ruth attended.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The Archdiocese of Washington will change an employee health care policy because of a same-sex marriage law expected to take effect in D.C. on Wednesday, the Associated Press reports.

As of Tuesday, the church will no longer let employees of its Catholic Charities add spouses to their health care coverage.

Catholic Charities, which provides services such as substance abuse treatment programs and shelters, employees some 850 people.

Archdiocesan spokeswoman Susan Gibbs says currently about 10 percent of those employees have their spouses covered by their health care plan.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (74)
        

At looks as if reconiliation might be possible after all between a Muslim couple in Ohio and the teenaged daughter who said she feared for her life after converting to Christianity.

Associated Press reporter Andrew Welsh-Huggins writes that a judge chided the divided family for filing legal motions instead of talking to one another, and then pushed a reconciliation plan back on track Tuesday:

Both the girl, Rifqa Bary, and her parents agreed to follow a counseling plan drawn up by the Franklin County child welfare agency last year to try to resolve the family's conflict.

The plan requires the girl and her parents, Mohamed and Aysha Bary, to work with individual counselors and to try to attend joint counseling.

Tuesday's deal patched up a short-lived January agreement that fell apart when the parents said their daughter was being allowed to contact Christian pastors who allegedly helped her run away to Florida in July. The couple believe that contact was hurting their chance for reconciliation.

The arrangement left open the possibility of such contact, but added a new requirement: The child welfare agency was to gather information on any pending criminal charges against the ministers and pass that on to the family's counselors.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

An atheist group asked students at the University of Texas, San Antonio, to trade in their Bibles for pornography.

KENS-TV in San Antonio reports that the activists set up a table on campus with a sign advertising "Trade in Holy Text 4 Porn" -- a deal they described as "Smut for Smut."

Some students gathered nearby to pray, KENS-TV reports.

After the event, the atheist group posted on their Twitter page, "Too often are we ignored this seems to get people to actually talk to us instead of ignore us."

The atheist group told KENS-TV it would donate its Bibles to local libraries.

http://www.kens5.com/news/local/Smut-for-smut-Bibles-for-porn-offer-draws-protesters-at-UTSA-85857462.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter.

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Movies about a widower who journeys by helium balloon, the migrations of animal families and Baltimore Ravens lineman Michael Oher are winners in the fifth annual Beliefnet Film Awards, announced on Tuesday.

From the Beliefnet release:

Best Spiritual Film

• The Road – Winner of the Judges’ Award
• The Blind Side – Winner of the People’s Choice Award

The Road, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, is winner of Best Spiritual Film for portraying the treacherous journey of a father and son struggling for survival in a post-apocalyptic world, as they “carry the fire” that symbolizes their hope for humanity. The Blind Side celebrates the heartfelt, true story of a homeless, traumatized boy who, with the support, love, and faith of an adoptive family, lives the dream of becoming an All-American football player.

Best Inspirational Film

• [Tie] Precious: Based on the ‘Novel’ Push by Sapphire and Up – Winner of the Judges' Award
• Precious: Based on the ‘Novel’ Push by Sapphire – Winner of the People’s Choice Award

Winner of both the People’s Choice Award and Judges’ Award, Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire follows the heart wrenching tale of 16-year old Claireece "Precious" Jones who, after being emotionally, physically and sexually abused her entire life, spiritually triumphs above hopelessness and gains the confidence to rise above her dismal situation with the help of three caring and life-saving mentors. The Judges’ Award goes to both Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire and Up, a fantastical story about Carl, a crotchety old man who ties helium balloons to his house and flies “up, up, and away” to escape the developers encroaching on his home — along the way, Carl grudgingly befriends a young wilderness scout, depicting a budding friendship that bridges generational gaps and shows what is most inspiring about humankind.

Best Spiritual Documentary

• More Than a Game – Winner of the Judges' Award
• Earth – Winner of the People’s Choice Award

More Than a Game is winner of the Judges’ Award for depicting a spiritual journey of five close-knit friends who become Akron, Ohio’s “Fab Five” high school basketball stars, one of which emerges as a leader — future NBA star LeBron James, who draws on the camaraderie of his friends, their commitment to prayer and the value of their Catholic educations, and the guidance of their coach. Earth, from Disneynature, earns the People’s Choice award for closely documenting three sets of animal families making their migratory journey across the planet, taking viewers through the seasons and across the globe to see nature's eternal themes of renewal and connection.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Longtime advocates of a tax credit for businesses that make donations to schools are hoping that the school closings to be announced this week by the Archdiocese of Baltimore will help build support for their cause, Baltimore Sun colleague Arthur Hirsch writes.

On Wednesday, the day the archdiocese of Baltimore gives details of its school reorganization plan to principals, teachers, parents and students, supporters of this year’s bill will rally in Annapolis. In past sessions, the Senate has passed the tax credit but it has died in the House.

Mary Ellen Russell, executive director of the Maryland Catholic Conference, was optimistic that news of the school closings – which was the most viewed story on the Sun Web site for much of Sunday -- would have “a tremendous impact on the General Assembly. ... It's demonstrating what we've been saying for years about the need for this legislation."

Sen. James E. DeGrange Sr. and Del. James E. Proctor Jr., both Democrats, have sponsored companion bills that would give Maryland businesses a 75 percent state tax credit for donations to organizations supporting scholarships and school programs.

Six states -- Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Rhode Island -- have enacted similar legislation. But the effort has drawn consistent opposition from the Maryland State Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union with 71,000 members, which says a tax credit would divert public money from public schools.

Facing rising costs and declining enrollment, the archdiocese is expected to close several schools at the end of the academic year. Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien is expected to announce details on Thursday.

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

At least 1,000 Christians, many holding olive branches, marched in protest near the restive Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday to urge the government to act decisively after a series of killings, Reuters reports.

After the killings of at least eight Christians in the last two weeks, Pope Benedict XVI issued an appeal Sunday for the security of religious minorities, according to Reuters.

The news service reports that two of the dead had gone missing, their bodies later found dumped in the street with gunshot wounds. Others were shot dead in the street, near their homes, or at their place of work.

Some 683 Christian families, or 4,098 people, fled Mosul between February 20 and 27 following the attacks, the United Nations reported on Sunday.

"I appeal to the civil authorities to complete every effort to give security again to the population, and in particular, to the most vulnerable religious minorities," the Pope said in his weekly blessing from Vatican City.

Read the Reuters story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Hundreds of activists in the Dutch city of 's-Hertogenbosch walked out of Mass on Sunday to protest a priest’s refusal to give communion to a practicing homosexual, the BBC reports.

Having foreseen the protest, the Roman Catholic church of Sint-Jan had decided not give communion to anyone, according to the BBC.

The dispute began in February, when a priest in nearby Reusel refused communion to the openly gay carnival prince of that nearby town. Same-sex marriage is legal in the Netherlands, but the Catholic Church teaches homosexual acts are sinful.

On Sunday, the BBC reports, several hundred demonstrators in pink wigs and clothes left the church in protest.

Read the BBC report.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

Dr. Maleeha Lodhi, a policy scholar at the the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, is a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States.

Have the military operations in South Waziristan, other tribal areas and Swat helped to create a strategic moment in the country’s struggle against militants? Will 2010 be decisive in reversing the tide of militancy after a deadly year that saw a record number of terrorist attacks and killings? Has military action scattered the local Taliban or irrevocably weakened the movement?

There are no easy answers to these questions in a fluid and fraught situation gravely affected by border volatility that is being heightened by the escalating war in Afghanistan. The consolidation of gains made by military offensives will depend on overcoming a sobering number of hurdles and resolving critical governance issues. This means a greater role for political rather than military actors in the transition to the post-conflict phase.

Militancy has been dealt a lethal blow but one that is not fatal yet. The necessary though not sufficient conditions have been created to turn the tide. The loss within six months of two leaders – Baitullah and Hakeemullah Mehsud – has left the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan in confusion and disarray. The assault on the TTP stronghold in South Waziristan has degraded the organization’s capability. But its continued ability to strike in the mainland suggests it has more than just a residual capacity and is using its connection with other groups to orchestrate the attacks.

Among the daunting tasks ahead are to dismantle the militants’ ‘syndicate’ that remains intact, disrupt its supply line and flow of financial resources – which are also intact, and destroy its intelligence ‘assets’. Also critical is to halt the flow of recruits into the ranks of the Pakistani Taliban, even though this has been affected by its loss of physical space. That the threat may be becoming more dispersed is indicated by the nexus the TTP has established over time with proscribed organizations or their splinters beyond FATA.

While the top leaders have been eliminated as part of a decapitation strategy the rest of the TTP leadership are still at large. Many melted away into the adjoining areas in pursuit of new hideouts which necessitated cordon and search operations in Orakzai, Khyber and beyond. The leader of the Swat Taliban Maulvi Fazlullah is said to have fled to Afghanistan.

None of this minimizes the significance of what has happened so far. The army today has a presence in all seven tribal agencies including North Waziristan where a division is deployed. It is engaged in counter-militancy missions of varying intensity in a phased way to avoid multiple engagements and minimize the danger of ‘overstretch’. The strategy of dealing with one area at a time seems to be paying off.

The offensive launched last October in South Waziristan – the largest ever counterinsurgency operation – is now in the ‘hold’ mode having almost completed the ‘clear’ phase. Five brigades are in the Mehsud area while the region east and west of this is being cleared where air power is also being used.

The operation has been effective in neutralizing the TTP’s centre of gravity. The Taliban have been dislodged from their sanctuaries, control of the area wrested from them and their training camps – from where an estimated 80 per cent of suicide bombings were launched – destroyed.

Two of Operation Rah-i-Nijaat’s three objectives have been achieved: establishing the state’s writ and dismantling the insurgents’ infrastructure. The third goal, to create space for civilian authorities to engage tribal elders in establishing a sustainable political order, is a work in progress.

This is the imposing challenge of the present phase, in which tribal maliks have to be encouraged to return and their authority revived to reestablish a functional arrangement that can take over from the military. Progress in this task will enable the estimated 200,000 locals who fled the Mehsud area to return for rehabilitation.

None of this will be quick or easy. It will need to be buttressed by significant development activity so that an environment can be created that is inhospitable to the return of the militants and alleviates the socio-economic conditions that feed the insurgency.

The projects being launched by the army in partnership with the local administration after consultation with tribal elders are a step in the right direction. As also are efforts to secure the support of the Mehsud and Waziri tribal maliks for development.

The litmus test of a military operation is when it ends and a credible governance authority is fostered. Inability to deliver on this can unravel the military gains and lose critical local support.

Swat’s experience is instructive in this respect. Although the phase of ‘build’ and ‘transfer’ (of responsibilities from the military to civilian authorities) has proceeded slower than expected, due to capacity limitations, reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts are in full swing even as military action to ‘sanitize’ and secure surrounding areas continues. There is no better testimony to the revival of public confidence and return of normalcy than the repatriation of the displaced population and last month’s peaceful by-election to a provincial assembly seat.

But terrorist attacks continue to shake the country. 2009 was the most violent year mainly because of the fierce backlash against the military operations. Daily bomb explosions strained the public’s patience and tested the national resolve to fight militancy. Last year surpassed the previous year’s grim record: an estimated 2,586 terrorist, insurgent and sectarian-related incidents – including 87 suicide attacks – compared to 2,577 in 2008. 3,021 people were killed in terrorist violence in 2009.

Some of the violence continuing into this year may be reprisals for the intensified US drone strikes in the tribal areas. Increasing attacks on ‘soft’ targets may represent a shift in tactics by militants aimed at shaking the national consensus. This is backfiring as the brutal assaults have only steeled the public will to fight back.

The tribal areas remain volatile. The intensification of military action in Bajaur and to some extent Mohmand is a response to resurgent militant activity increasingly launched from across the border. This reflects a ‘reverse safe haven’ phenomenon which is a potent reminder of how instability in Afghanistan continues to jeopardize Pakistan’s counterinsurgency efforts – and also of the fact that militancy cannot be defeated in isolation to the security situation next door.

The US/Nato offensive in southern Afghanistan can also adversely affect Pakistan. Both “push” (militants being driven to Pakistan from Afghanistan) and “pull” (expecting the Pakistan army to act as an ‘anvil’) factors can strain the military’s capacity and detract from its anti militant efforts.

Especially as the campaign is at a delicate juncture. While TTP militants are on the run, having been deprived of a base to train, regroup and operate from, this has not led to a halt in their activities. The loose network has shown a capacity to regenerate even after the loss of its leaders and recover from fierce internal struggles. It may now be adapting to mounting pressure by dispersing and coordinating actions with sympathetic groups outside FATA.

A more diffuse threat with the means to cause disruption in the country’s mainland will need a different response than military assaults to secure territory. They will require effective law enforcement, improved policing, better intelligence and ofcourse sustained public support.

This means replacing a fire fighting approach with a comprehensive and multilayered strategy that employs a diverse toolkit for what most certainly will be a long haul. When Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani recently described the present phase as transitional he seemed to call for such an approach in which the state’s civilian organs take a lead role.

The key question is whether a capacity can be generated for such a ‘civilian surge’ even as the various law enforcement agencies take sustained steps to dismantle the syndicate of terror that still operates in the country. In the longer run the neutralization of this network will also rest on bringing to an end the conflicts and disputes in the region that have motivated and nourished the forces of militancy.

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