A 9.0-magnitude earthquake has shaken Japan, killing at least hundreds, igniting fires and sending waves across the Pacific Ocean. Following are links to organizations that are accepting donations for relief of the people of Japan.
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
Episcopal Relief and Development
International Rescue Committee
Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief
Jewish Federations of North America
The Vatican has accepted the resignation of Bishop John H. Ricard, who served 13 years in the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore and chaired Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services for five.
Ricard, 71, suffered a stroke in December 2009 and has undergone several surgeries since. He submitted his resignation to the Vatican last month.
Bishops ordinarily serve until they turn 75, but are asked to resign if they are unable to function effectively.
Ricard was a popular auxiliary bishop in Baltimore from 1984 until 1997, when he was tapped by Pope John Paul II to head the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee in Florida. The Baton Rouge, La., native was ordained a Josephite father in 1968.
Catholic Relief Services President Ken Hackett said the organization will be praying for his health and happiness.”
“Bishop Ricard was a visionary leader for CRS at a time when the agency was going through expansion and many changes,” Hackett said in a statement. “I was privileged to visit CRS programs on many occasions with Bishop Ricard and witness firsthand his understanding and compassion for people in some of the poorest places in our world.”
Continue reading "Vatican accepts resignation of former Balto. bishop" »
Associated Press writer Victor L. Simpson reports:
Pope Benedict XVI has long championed organ transplants, but don't expect an organ donation from him. The Vatican says his body belongs to the whole church.
While the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has possessed an organ donor card since the 1970s when he lived in Germany, it was rendered void when he became pope in 2005, his secretary said.
Monsignor Georg Gaenswein addressed the issue in a letter to a German doctor who has been using the fact that Benedict possessed a donor card to recruit other donors. Vatican Radio reported on the letter in a German language broadcast this week.
Gaenswein sought to put the matter to rest, saying any references to the now invalid document are mistaken.
Polish Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, head of the Vatican's health office, told La Repubblica newspaper that it was understandable that a pope's body remains intact because it belongs to the entire church.
"It is also understandable in view of possible future veneration," he said, referring to future sainthood. "This doesn't take anything away from the validity and the beauty of the gift of organ donation."
Continue reading "Vatican: Pope Benedict no longer an organ donor" »
In spite of the slow economic recovery, and a national downturn in charitable giving, the Archdiocese of Baltimore raised a record amount for ministries and programs in 2010, the archdiocese said Tuesday.
More than 40,000 people donated more than $8.7 million to the Archbishop's Annual Appeal, up more than 67 percent since 2006.
“Ironically, the Appeal has seen its greatest growth since the downturn in the economy -- a clear indication not only of the efforts of the Archbishop and pastors and pastoral life directors who promoted the appeal as a way of helping people in need, but also the extraordinary generosity of Catholics and others in the Archdiocese of Baltimore,” said Patrick Madden, the archdiocesan director of development.
According to the archdiocese, 46 percent of the money raised in 2010 was returned to parishes to fund church operations and programs, 23 percent went to Catholic Charities, and 31 percent is funding ministries and outreach programs such as AIDS ministry, prison ministry and the Interfaith Housing Alliance in Western Maryland.
“The reach of the Appeal is enormous," Madden said. "In fact, many of the programs the Appeal supports could not continue to operate without funding from the Archbishop’s Annual Appeal."
The Associated Press reports:
Parishioners have posted bail for a Roman Catholic priest charged with felony sex crimes against a 12-year-old California boy.
The Rev. Alejandro Jose Castillo was arrested Oct. 25 at his home in Ontario, Calif., and was charged with seven counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under age 14 and one count of forcible lewd and lascivious acts with a child under age 14.
Hundreds of people affiliated with the parishioners group Coalition to Exonerate Fr. Alex raised the $24,000 in bail money. Coalition director Ted Campos says they believe in his innocence.
As a condition for release, Castillo can have no contact with minors.
He was removed as pastor of Ontario's Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in June.
The president of Catholic Relief Services is stepping down at the beginning of 2012, the Baltimore-based humanitarian agency announced Wednesday.
Ken Hackett, 63, has headed CRS since 1993, leading the agency through Hurricane Mitch in Central America, multiple famines in Africa, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and the Haiti earthquake earlier this year.
Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, the chairman of the CRS board of directors, said a board committee would conduct a nationwide search for a successor to Hackett with a goal of installing the next president by January 2012.
Hackett has agreed to continue serving as president for six months beyond the expiration of his current five-year term in June 2011, and to continue on as a consultant until July 2012 to assist in the transition.
“Over two years ago, Ken Hackett, our esteemed president, challenged the Board to become robustly intentional in our strategy for future leadership transition, including his own office as CEO,” Dolan wrote in a note to CRS staff.
“Ken’s challenge to the board was characteristic of his nearly four decades of devotion to CRS—he only wants to be a servant to Jesus Christ, His Church, His poor,” Dolan wrote. “We took him seriously. The good news is that we can do this patiently and carefully, because we are able to approach any leadership changes from a position of strength, success and stability.”
Continue reading "Catholic Relief Services president stepping down" »
The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.
The commentary page in this morning's Baltimore Sun carries a piece I wrote on the major gubernatorial candidates’ low levels of charitable giving, as first reported in the Sun over the weekend.
One issue that space didn’t permit me to explore was the question of whether one should give based on pre- or post-tax income. Some teach that we should give a percentage of our take-home pay, since that’s really the only money we have any control over. Others say that we should give a percentage of pre-tax income, since we are called to give of our “first fruits,” that is, of the first and best that we yield.
I incline strongly toward the latter view, for two reasons. Theologically, I can’t get past the idea that Uncle Sam would get his cut before God does. But from the perspective of personal responsibility, I think it’s essential for us to recognize that the big number on our pay stub is in fact what we’re getting paid — and that what we take home is that amount less the money that we have withheld as payment for other things.
In regard to some of those things we have no choice: our employers are required to deduct payroll taxes and to withhold income taxes. On others we do, and most of us should choose to have money withheld for retirement plans, health care and disability premiums, etc. Some employers even allow us to make charitable contributions directly out of our paychecks. But in all cases, the amount we take home is simply the number that ends up on our checks (or deposited directly in our bank accounts) after certain payments have reduced the amount we actually got paid. We might take home, say, $1000, but that doesn’t change the fact that we got paid $1,500.
Some people believe that the amount one gives should be reduced in accordance with the fact that some functions covered by the “tithe” as directed in the Old Testament are handled by government — after all, ancient Israel was a theocratic nation-state. Others respond that if you add up the various “tithes” commanded the actual amount God instructed his people to give is closer to 27 percent than 10 percent, and involves giving a combination of a portion of both income and assets.
Continue reading "Give it away, give it away, give it away now" »
The first sign of danger was the crackle of gunfire over their heads. Ten gunmen, their faces covered, rushed toward terrified humanitarian workers and began shouting "Satellite! Satellite!" — a demand to surrender their phones.
Moments later, 10 of them lay dead, including two women hiding in the back seat of a car the attackers hit with a grenade, according to an Afghan official familiar with the account the sole survivor gave police.
It is the first detailed narrative of the slaying of six Americans, two Afghans, one German and a Briton on Aug. 5 in remote northern Afghanistan, the Associated Press reports. They were ambushed and shot Aug. 5 after journeying about 100 miles — much of it on foot and horseback — through the Hindu Kush mountains, giving eye and other medical care to impoverished villagers.
Afghan and U.S. investigators spent at least four hours this week questioning the survivor, a 24-year-old father of three named Safiullah. He was employed as a driver for International Assistance Mission, a nonprofit Christian organization that has worked in Afghanistan since 1966.
Safiullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, told investigators that the killings occurred around 7:30 a.m. or 8:30 a.m., according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose details of the ongoing investigation.
Continue reading "AP Exclusive: The aid workers' last minutes" »
To spur blood donations, a Red Cross chapter in Northern Ohio is offering people who give a pint of blood the chance to win a car -- or, for the Amish who live in the region, a horse-drawn buggy, the Associated Press reports.
Spokeswoman Christy Chapman in Cleveland says the Red Cross didn't want to leave its many Amish donors out of the giveaway. The organization's Northern Ohio blood services region includes three counties with one of the nation's largest Amish populations.
The Red Cross regional operation has a board member who is Amish and who is arranging to have a buggy custom-made for the contest, which wraps up Sept. 6.
Blood donors who prefer a more modern mode of transportation can win a 2010 Nissan Versa.
An Owings Mills contractor who has offered the Archdiocese of Baltimore $700,000 to help pay transportation costs for children displaced by the closing of 12 Catholic elementary schools has taken to the airwaves, encouraging families to take advantage of his offer.
Area radio listeners are growing familiar with the voice of Danny Schuster, Baltimore Sun colleague Mary Gail Hare reports: Schuster, who owns a concrete company, took to the airwiaves earlier this year to protest the school closings.
He has taken a different tack this time, hoping to boost enrollment by helping students get to schools, including Holy Angels, an elementary the archdiocese is opening this fall on the campus of Seton Keough High School. There had been some concern that there would not be enough transferring students to fill the school.
"The archbishop and I have worked out a transportation plan," Schuster tells Hare. "Our goal is to get as many of these kids to take advantage of the offer and to continue their Catholic education."
Read more about Danny Schuster's help for Catholic School students at baltimoresun.com.
For every hurricane, earthquake or flood, there is help: food, bottled water, crews of volunteers nailing shingles to brand new roofs.
What even grateful recipients of that aid might not realize, the Associated Press reports, is that much of it comes from an unlikely hodgepodge of religious groups who put aside their doctrinal differences and coordinate their efforts as soon as the wind starts blowing.
Southern Baptists cook meals from Texas to Massachusetts. Seventh-day Adventists dispense aid from makeshift warehouses that can be running within eight hours. Mennonites haul away debris, Buddhists provide financial aid and chaplains with the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team counsel the traumatized and grieving.
This "juice and cookies fellowship," as one organizer calls it, is mostly invisible to the public, but it provides interfaith infrastructure for disaster response around the country that state and federal officials could scarcely live without.
"Think of us as the United Nations of disaster relief," said Diana Rothe-Smith, executive director of National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, the main umbrella group for coordinating emergency response from private agencies.
Continue reading "The 'United Nations of disaster relief'" »
Afghans have burned an effigy of Pope Benedict XVI out of anger over claims charities preached Christianity in the Muslim country, the Associated Press reports.
U.S.-based Church World Service and Norwegian Church Aid deny spreading Christianity. The government suspended them last week while investigating allegations in an Afghan television report.
More than 1,000 people marched Tuesday in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, demanding organizations that proselytized in Afghanistan be banned.
The crowd roared approval as protesters doused the effigy of the pope in kerosene and lit it.
They shouted: "Death to America! Long Live Islam!"
Aid workers say the allegations increase the threat to staff already at risk for insurgent attack.
"Repentant drug dealers and gang members streamed into Allan Tibbels' home Thursday without knocking. Children who once went hungry dove into food spread on the kitchen table. Community leaders from Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood and elsewhere sat together, swapping stories of inspiration.
"The scene, said Susan Tibbels, reflected nothing less than her husband's lifelong dream."
So begins the wonderful story in Friday's Baltimore Sun story on the life of Allan Tibbels, the Sandtown fixture whom Sun colleagues Jacques Kelly and Erica Green describe as "a pious man who expressed his convictions through hammers and nails and drywall."
Tibbells died early Thursday. The story continues:
For nearly 21 years, Mr. Tibbels was the force behind Sandtown Habitat for Humanity, an organization that built and renovated nearly 300 homes in one of the city's most blighted areas.
"He was an inspiring moral example," said Michael Sarbanes, the former head of the Citizens Planning and Housing Association and a top official in the city school system.
Many of the stories friends shared about Mr. Tibbels started with the curiosity about a white man in a wheelchair moving his family into a impoverished black neighborhood. All ended with a way that he had changed their life.
"Everything was always about Sandtown," said LaVerne Stokes, a co-executive director of the Habitat program and an owner of one of the rebuilt homes. "Even on his deathbed, he was still talking about the community. Our community knows that if anybody loved them, he did."
A U.S. missionary should spend six months in prison for her failed attempt to remove 33 children from Haiti following the Jan. 12 earthquake, a prosecutor said Thursday on the first day of her trial, the Associated Press reports.
Prosecutor Sonel Jean-Francois told the court that Laura Silsby knew she was breaking the law by trying to take the children without proper documents to an orphanage she was starting in the neighboring Dominican Republic.
"Laura recognized she violated the law," Jean-Francois said as lawyers and a small group of spectators crowded into a a stiflingly hot tent in the parking lot of the quake-damaged courthouse.
He spoke after the Idaho woman testified. Silsby, who was leader of a group of Baptists detained by authorities, was the only person to testify on the first day of the trial. She spent much of the rest of the session reading the Bible.
The 40-year-old businesswoman told the court she thought the children were orphans whose homes were destroyed in the earthquake. An Associated Press investigation later revealed all the children had at least one living parent, who had turned their children over to the group in hopes of securing better lives for them.
Continue reading "Haitian prosecutor: U.S. missionary deserves jail" »
Russia suspended all adoptions to U.S. families on Thursday until the two countries can agree on procedures, the Associated Press reports. The move comes a week after an American woman sent her 7-year-old adopted son back to Russia on a plane by himself.
The boy's return — without supervision or explanation aside from a note he carried from his adoptive mother saying he had psychological problems — has incensed Russia and prompted aggressive media coverage of foreign adoptions.
A U.S. delegation will visit Moscow "in the next few days" to discuss international adoptions and a possible bilateral agreement, Russian foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said.
"Russia believes that only such an agreement which will contain effective tools for Russian and U.S. officials to monitor the living conditions of adopted Russian children will ensure that recent tragedies in the United States will not be repeated," Nesterenko said in a televised briefing.
The Tennessee woman who sent back the 7-year-old boy last Thursday claimed she had been misled by his Russian orphanage about his condition.
Russians have been outraged that no charges have been filed against her.
For several years, Russian lawmakers have suggested suspending U.S. adoptions after other cases of abuse and even killings of Russian children adopted in the United States, but no formal measures had been taken until Thursday.
More than 1,800 Russian children were adopted in the United States last year, according to Russia's Health and Education Ministry.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Musicians, dancers and dramatists will gather at the Miracle Temple Seventh-day Adventist Church in Baltimore on Saturday to raise funds for the Adventist Development Relief Agency in Haiti. Scheduled to attend is the Rev. Dr. Barry Black, the chaplain of the U.S. Senate and a Baltimore native.
The event, sponsored by the church and the Pray at the Pump Movement, is scheduled for 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday at the church at 120 S. Glen Rock Road in Baltimore. The congregation is home to several Haitians.
Pray at the Pump Movement founder Rocky Twyman, a musician himself, is challenging musicians in the area and throughout the country to organize similar fundraisers in the coming weeks and months.
The Stone Songs concert series at New Hope Community Church in Pikesville, the congregation pastored by friend and In Good Faith contributor Jason Poling, will be hosting a fundraiser for Haiti Saturday evening.
Headlining the show at the historic Stone Chapel in Garrison Forest is singer/songwriter L.J. Booth, with local Doug Alan Wilcox opening. The address is 18 stone Chapel Lane, just off Reisterstown Road in Pikesville. Doors open for a wine and cheese reception at 7 p.m., with the performance beginning at 8.
Tickets are $20; all proceeds will benefit the work in Haiti of World Relief, the Baltimore-based relief and development agency of the National Association of Evangelicals. Information, tickets and more on the Stone Songs series are available at www.stonesongs.org.
Three senior staff members of a Carroll County-based aid organization were pulled alive from the wreckage of their hotel in Haiti after spending more than 50 hours trapped in rubble, Baltimore Sun colleague Scott Calvert reports.
"We're ecstatic. That all of them were found alive in the rubble is just miraculous," Douglas Bright, vice president of IMA World Health in New Windsor, told Calvert. The story continues:
The three are IMA president Richard Santos, vice president of international programs Sarla Chand and IMA Haiti program manager Ann Varghese, who lives in Baltimore. When the earthquake struck Tuesday, the three had just concluded a meeting at the Hotel Montana in the capital Port-au-Prince. The hotel collapsed and IMA had received no word from its staff members.Bright said he learned close to midnight Thursday that Santos and Chand had been found alive. Subsequent reports brought news that Varghese was safe. In addition, Bright said the people they were meeting with at the hotel, including a former IMA board member, were rescued.
ABC News reported that Santos and another victim rescued from Hotel Montana, Jim Gulley, pulled out the only snacks they had with them during the ordeal -- Orbitz gum and a Tootsie Roll lollipop.
Five Haitian employees of IMA were still missing, however, including a doctor who ran the organization's local office. None of the Haitian staff members attended the meeting; they worked out of a small building in Petionville outside the capital.
Following are links to organizations that are accepting donations for relief of the people of Haiti after the earthquake Tuesday that has devastated the Caribbean nation of 9 million.
American Friends Service Committee
Episcopal Relief & Development
International Committee of the Red Cross
International Orthodox Christian Charities
International Relief and Development
International Rescue Committee
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance
The organizations above are all well known, long established and reputable. Over at the Consuming Interests blog, Baltimore Sun colleague Andrea Walker writes of an FBI warning against fundraising scams.
Former Baltimore Sun religion writer John Rivera, now at Catholic Relief Services, passes along this note this morning from Karel Zelenka, CRS country representative for Haiti. The Baltimore based-organization has about 300 staff in the Caribbean nation, and is sending more specialists, supplies and money to respond to the earthquake.
We are all accounted for except for two staff. They are probably fine, but out of phone reach close to Gonaives. We have a terrible problem with communications – only incoming calls. We tried to organize this morning and contact UN, OFDA and Caritas. We might be running out of supplies ourselves – water and food. Holly [Inuretta, regional technical advisor for emergencies for Latin America and the Caribbean, who is traveling to Haiti from the Dominican Republic] should load a car with supplies. No organized rescue efforts yet – all done by individuals with bare hands. Damage incredible all around, but our offices seem fine. Some major buildings are gone – the hotel Montana, the National Palace etc. All AA flights canceled until this weekend. UN has only 4 helicopters, two were seen early this morning doing surveys, otherwise no movement of any rescue vehicles / people. Most in a shock. …On radio stations only wild music. People have been screaming and praying all over the place throughout the night. It is a disaster of the century, we should be prepared for thousands and thousands of dead and injured.
When I was covering the Caribbean from 2002 to 2005, Haiti was my favorite country to visit, for the people, the culture, the music, the art, the food -- it's a welcoming and fascinating place. I've been sending e-mail to check on friends and contacts.
In the months since we started In Good Faith, we've attracted readers and commenters from all over the world. Ties to the Baltimore area will be helpful in spotting some familiar faces in the video above (the list appears at the end).
I wanted to take a moment to say a sincere thank you to all who have stopped by, and particularly to those who have joined in the spirited debate taking shape on these pages. During this holiday season, we wish the very best to everyone of every faith, and no faith at all.
I expect to be posting only lightly over the next few days as I take time off to spend with my family. As my father would say: Talk amongst yourselves.
Best,
Matt
A South Carolina priest missed the $1 million top prize in a poker tournament to be televised this weekend but he won $100,000 for his church and he hopes his participation gives viewers a "fun twist" on their perceptions of the priesthood, the Associated Press reports.
The Rev. Andrew Trapp told the AP he entered the PokerStars.net Million Dollar Challenge in hopes of putting St. Michael Catholic Church "super close" to its $5.5 million fundraising goal to build a new facility. He also wanted to strike a public relations blow for priests.
"At the very least, even if I didn't win any prize money, I was hoping it would help people to see that priests can have fun and be normal people and hopefully get a little bit of a fun twist on the image of the priesthood," the assistant pastor said Tuesday.
The top prize went to retired New York Police detective Mike Kosowski. But Trapp won $100,000, untaxed, in a semifinal round in October for the coastal church's building fund, which has amassed $4 million after four years of fundraising.
We were looking on Thursday for families whose financial straits had led them for the first time in their lives to accept charity on Thanksgiving. At the Bea Gaddy "Thanks for Giving" dinner at Patterson Park, they weren't difficult to find.
We began the story in Friday's newspaper with Michael Briscoe, a truck driver from New Orleans who had come to Baltimore after Katrina in part for the city's churches; since being laid off by the state in July, he has come to rely on those churches for support.
We met Luminosa Nolasco, who arrived from Mexico 10 years ago, but has been out of work since falling down a flight of stairs last year. And Lorenzo Marino, who says his restaurant job does not pay enough to cover the everyday bills.
Gary Slavinsky says he has been unable to find steady work since he got out of prison in January. A recovering heroin addict, he was serving a sentence for robbery.
"It's definitely the economy," he said of his inability to string together more than a few days of construction work. "I had a heroin habit three years ago, and it was still easier to work."
Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army also reported seeing more first-timers this year.
"Of course there's more need - absolutely," said Peggy Vick, director of volunteer and family services for the Salvation Army in Baltimore. She estimated that one-third of the Marylanders receiving Thanksgiving baskets from the organization's Baltimore Area Command this year were first-timers.
"We've seen an upswing of people who have just recently lost their jobs," Vick said. "They've not only had one person laid off in their family, both people have been laid off in their family, and so they've had a difficult time trying to sustain their household."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported last week that more than one in seven American households experienced food insecurity in 2008. That was the highest level since the annual survey was initiated in 1995 and reflected the greatest year-over-year increase.
Of the 17 million food-insecure households, more than a third suffered "very low food security," meaning that the food intake of some household members was reduced and their eating patterns disrupted at times. In raw numbers, the number of households with very low food security increased from 4.7 million in 2007 to 6.7 million in 2008, a gain of more than 40 percent.
The head of Catholic Relief Services is asking his brother bishops a favor: “Brag about us a little bit.”
Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, who chairs the Baltimore-based relief agency, spoke on Monday to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is meeting this week at the Mariott Waterfront Hotel in Baltimore. Dolan said Catholic Relief Services, the overseas relief and development agency of the U.S. bishops, remains little known even among Catholics:
Even though CRS is recognized as a leader among humanitarian agencies for its professionalism, innovation and efficiency, the fact is that many of your parishioners have not heard of us.I recently heard a troubling fact. CRS conducted a survey, using an independent polling agency, and asked Catholics to name a humanitarian agency that works overseas. And do you know how many mentioned CRS? Only 22 percent. And that was a huge improvement from the previous year, when only 11 percent named CRS. We have a lot of work to do! We do not spend a lot of money on advertising, as do other similar relief agencies, as less than 5% of our budget goes for overhead.
That’s why I’d like to ask a favor of all of you, my brother bishops. Because CRS is your agency, brag about us a little bit. Perhaps you could write an occasional column in your diocesan newspapers about the work of CRS. Perhaps you could encourage your parishes to get involved in Operation Rice Bowl, the CRS Lenten program. Or maybe you could encourage you priests to mention CRS from time to time in their homilies. Or better yet, they could get involved in our Global Fellows program – we send priests, deacons and seminarians overseas to see the work of CRS first hand, and they come back as some of our best ambassadors.
Dolan concluded with an anecdote that he said illustrated how CRS works, and the impact it has.
A multi-year study hosted by the University of Maryland and including several area groups concludes that faith-based organizations can better weather an economic downturn by building stronger ties with the ministries the congregations that support them.
From a release issued on Thursday:
Particularly during an economic downturn, faith-based organizations tied only to one or two congregations, especially if those were not thriving congregations, had the most trouble raising resources and some shut down. While single-congregation support of a program might be considered more authentic, faith-based organizations supported by a wider umbrella or an interfaith base fared better.
“We compared everything from small food pantries directly connected to a congregation to national hospital systems and their local affiliated hospitals,” said Maryland Associate Professor Jo Anne Schneider, who led the project. “Congregation-focused models work well for mainline Protestants, Quakers and African American churches, but only if several congregations provide support or the sponsoring congregation is sufficiently active with enough resources to support the nonprofit. Jewish and Catholic systems rely on their communities as a whole with the Jewish Federation, Archdiocese, or Order providing centralized support. Some thriving evangelical organizations rely on networks with no formal connections to congregations.”
Other key findings of the report, entitled “Faith and Organization Project: Maintaining Vital Between Faith Communities and their Organizations:”
* A new breed of evangelical organizations has emerged with a different understanding about how to develop an organization to do a specific mission that is firmly based in a particular set of beliefs but that focuses on personal relationships to provide services rather than sharing their faith as a means to improve the lives of those served.
Continue reading "UMD study stresses ties for faith-based ministries" »
From former Sun religion writer John Rivera, now at Catholic Relief Services, comes this photograph of Our Lady of Perpetual Help chapel in Marikina, Philippines. Note the pew lodged in the rafters during tropical storm Ketsana over the weekend.
Laura Sheahen, the Baltimore-based organization's regional information director for Asia and the Pacific rim, writes:
Pew, that was close
Flood survivors receive aid at a chapel in Marikina, Philippines. When tropical storm Ketsana hit the island, massive flooding drove thousands from their homes. Father Javier Mexicano, shown here standing, was caught in his small parish house during the storm. He and another priest broke through the roof, waited there for the waters to settle, and eventually swam to safety.
A pew is lodged in the rafters of the chapel, where it floated during the flood.
Read Sheahen's blog post on the storm and its aftermath at the CRS Voices blog.
Photo by Laura Sheahen/Catholic Relief Services
Last month in Kentucky, an Assemblies of God congregation drew international attention with its "open carry celebration," in which the pastor invited members of to come to bring their guns to church, that they might "celebrate our rights as Americans."
“God and guns were part of the foundation of this country,” the Rev. Ken Pagano told The New York Times.
Next month in Baltimore, a Catholic church will ask parishioners to bring weapons to church -- for a very different purpose. Responding to increased gun violence in the city, organizers say, St. Gregory the Great is sponsoring its seventh "Gun Turn-In Day" on Sept. 12.
Since the parish began its effort to get guns off the streets, organizers say, more than 100 have been turned in.
“The police have verified that in the past, some of these weapons that have been turned in have been very lethal,” Monsignor Damien G. Nalepa said in a statement. “We appeal to all the citizens of our city to help stop the violence and turn in guns.”
Co-sponsored by the Catholic Review, the event is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the church at 1542 N. Gilmor St. Organizers are offering $100 for each workable automatic or semi-automatic handgun or assault rifle, and $50 for any other workable gun turned in.
Local Muslims are planning to fulfill their Ramadan obligation to help the needy on Saturday by giving a hot meal, clothing, health screening, contacts for job training and other assistance to more than 1,000 homeless people in Baltimore.
Organized in 19 cities nationwide by Islamic Relief, the annual Day of Dignity will be hosted locally by Masjid Ul Haqq at 514 Islamic Way. Since coming to Baltimore in 2005, organizers say, the effort has served nearly 3,500 people.
Initiated in Los Angeles, the event is now held annually in New York, Washington, Philadelphia,Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Detroit and other cities.
While philanthropies everywhere struggle to pry dollars loose from communities reeling from the recession, Baltimore's Jewish federation is celebrating what in these times qualifies as an outstanding result: simply raising as much money as it did the year before.
The annual campaign of the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore hit the mark Tuesday, the last day of the fiscal year, organization officials said. The $30.8 million they raised means they will be able to fund all of the Associated's local educational, cultural and assistance programs at the same levels this year as last.
"What's at play here is provision of service," Associated President Marc B. Terrill said Tuesday. "We have to be the mouthpiece for the people that can't speak for themselves. So we went in with an attitude essentially that failure is not an option."
His organization's feat comes in a bleak environment for philanthropy both locally and nationwide. U.S. charitable giving fell 2 percent in 2008, according to a report released last month by the Giving USA Foundation. More than 80 percent of the nonprofit organizations surveyed by the Center for Civil Society Studies at the Johns Hopkins University early this year reported experiencing some level of fiscal stress, and close to 40 percent described the stress as "severe" or "very severe."
Among 157 Jewish federations in the United States and Canada, the pace of giving is off 13 percent this year, according to a spokesman for United Jewish Communities/Jewish Federations of North America. As a result, spokesman Joe Berkowfsky said, some federations are extending their annual campaigns beyond the June 30 close of the fiscal year.
Federal terrorism finance laws are interfering with the ability of American Muslims to give to charity as required by their faith, according to a report released Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Zakat, or alms giving, is one of the five pillars of Islam. But the ACLU says terrorism finance laws that were expanded after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to stop the flow of U.S. dollars to violent groups have made American Muslims afraid to give to any organization, lest it come under government suspicion and those who support it face criminal prosecution.
“Widespread intimidation of Muslim donors and the arbitrary blacklisting of charitable organizations trample on Muslims’ free exercise of religion through charitable giving and tarnish America’s reputation as a beacon of religious freedom,” said Jennifer Turner, who wrote the 164-page report, entitled “Blocking Faith, Freezing Charity.”
"Post-9/11 policies have created a climate of fear that prevents Muslims from practicing their religion, and unless the Obama administration takes action, this legacy of the Bush administration will persist."
The government has closed seven Muslim charities since Sept. 11, 2001, and two others have shut down after government raids on their offices, according to the Associated Press. In Dallas last month, a federal judge sentenced five members of the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development to prison after they were convicted of funneling money to the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The defendants said they only gave much-needed aid to a volatile region.
Two other high-profile terrorism-financing trials, in Chicago and Florida, ended without convictions on the major counts.
Continue reading "Anti-terror laws interfering with Muslim charity: ACLU" »
Worshippers at a Severn church on Sunday will walk in the footsteps of the poor as part of a national charity drive intended to provide shoes for the needy.
Grace Pointe Community Church of the Nazarene, which worships in the Kerr Center for the Arts on the upper campus of Annapolis Area Christian School, is one of thousands of congregations across the country participating in “Barefoot Sunday,” according to event organizers.
Church members will be asked to leave the shoes on the altar and walk out of services barefoot. The footwear will be collected by Soles4Souls Inc., which provides new and gently worn shoes to victims of disasters and those living in extreme poverty.
The Nashville-based outfit says it has distributed 4.3 million pairs of shoes in more than 125 countries including the United States.
A trio of Lutheran pastors from West Virginia will be wheeling their bamboo bicycle-built-for-three into Baltimore next week to talk about hunger here and around the world.
Baltimore is one of 65 cities that the Revs. Reinold “Ron” Schlak Jr., Frederick A. “Fred” Soltow Jr. and David A. Twedt are planning to visit during their 100-day, 13,000-mile Tour de Revs. The riders are hoping to raise $5 million for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America World Hunger and Disaster Appeal.
“We will be encouraging people to make giving to the [appeal] a regular part of their stewardship, not just contributing when a special offering is collected,” Twedt said in a release. “Beyond that, I would hope and expect that this church will continue to increase its support of those who, through no fault of their own, can not support themselves. Jesus is saying that to me in Matthew 25.”
Matthew 25:40 includes the injunction: “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me.”
Schlak, Soltow and Twedt, who describe their goals as “revelation, revolution and revenue,” will enter Baltimore on Monday via the Gwynns Falls Bike Trail. They are to be received at the Lutheran Center by Bishop H. Gerard Knoche, the Rev. John Nunes of Lutheran World Relief, Ralston Deffenbaugh of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services and Jill Schumann from Lutheran Services in America.
Continue reading "'Tour de Revs' pastors riding to fight world hunger" »
Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien and the board of trustees of Catholic Charities of Baltimore have tapped William J. McCarthy Jr. to lead the organization on the retirement of longtime Executive Director Harold A. Smith.
“The combination of Bill McCarthy’s executive experience in the Baltimore area, as well as his deep personal commitment to the church’s mission of serving the neediest among us, made him an ideal choice,” O’Brien said in a statement.
A parishioner of the Church of the Nativity in Timonium, McCarthy is president of SunTrust Bank, Greater Baltimore, and executive vice president for wealth and investment management of SunTrust Bank Mid-Atlantic.
“I cannot imagine a more powerful calling to public service than leading Catholic Charities,” he said.
McCarthy takes over on Aug. 1. Smith, who has been executive director for 33 years, will remain on staff through the end of the year to assist in the transition.
Continue reading "Banker to replace longtime Catholic Charities chief" »
