Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien has been chosen to head a Catholic order of knights based in Rome, the Vatican announced Monday, an appointment likely to move O'Brien closer to becoming a cardinal, but also will make him the first of Baltimore's archbishops not to finish his career here.

Pope Benedict XVI named O'Brien to lead the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, a 1,000-year-old group charged with supporting the Christian community and sacred sites of the Holy Land.

O'Brien, the spiritual leader of the Baltimore area's half-million Catholics, will continue administering the archdiocese until his successor is named until his own successor is named, the Baltimore archdiocese said in a news release early Monday.

The archdiocese has scheduled a news conference for 10 a.m.

Read more on O'Brien's new assignment at baltimore sun.com.

The press release follows, after the jump.

Continue reading "O'Brien to lead order of knights in Rome" »

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Pope Benedict XVI is set to name Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien to a Rome-based order of knights charged with protecting the Christian community and sacred sites of the Holy Land, a prominent Catholic blogger is reporting.

Blogger Rocco Palmo writes that O’Brien, 72, could be named pro-grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem as early as Monday.

The Baltimore Sun has been unable to confirm the report independently. Messages left for the archdiocese have not been returned.

By tradition, Palmo writes on his Whispers in the Loggia blog, the “pro-” designation indicates that the individual is next in line to be named a cardinal, at which point the prefix disappears.

O’Brien arrived in Baltimore in 2007, succeeding Cardinal William Keeler as archbishop of Baltimore and spiritual leader of the area’s 500,000 Catholics.

He presided over the restructuring of the archdiocesan school system last year, closing 13 of 64 schools, consolidating those that remained and introducing new programs in the hope of attracting more families.

More recently, he urged Gov. Martin O’Malley last month against supporting same-sex marriage, which he described in a letter as “a goal that so deeply conflicts with your faith.”

O’Brien joined Benedict in 2008 to concelebrate a Mass at Nationals Park in Washington during the pope’s visit to the United States.

Continue reading "Report: Archbishop to leave Baltimore for Rome" »

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Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Director of Project Genesis, a Jewish cyber-outreach organization based in Baltimore.

According to a new book from a professor at UCLA, the media's left-wing bias is so overwhelming and pervasive that the few balanced news outlets appear to have a conservative slant.

"It's like concluding that six-three is short just because it is short compared to professional basketball players," writes Professor Tim Groseclose. He asserts that by a neutral standard, Fox News and the Drudge Report are centrist, with perhaps even a minor left-wing tilt -- but due to the steep liberal bias of every other major outlet, "commentators mistake relative bias for absolute bias." From the article:

Groseclose opens his book quoting a well-known poll in which Washington correspondents declared that they vote Democratic 93 percent to 7 percent, while the nation is split about 50-50. As a result, he says, most reporters write with a liberal filter. "Using objective, social-scientific methods, the filtering prevents us from seeing the world as it actually is. Instead, we see only a distorted version of it. It is as if we see the world through a glass—a glass that magnifies the facts that liberals want us to see and shrinks the facts that conservatives want us to see."

If the liberal media tends to "shrink" conservative facts, this is true to a still more extreme degree with anything concerning religion. The Deseret News, the commercial paper of the Mormon Church, recently published a two-part series on news coverage of religion -- or the lack thereof. Journalists not only tend to be much more liberal, but much less religious, then the American population.

A 2002 survey (the most recent data available) of 1,149 randomly selected journalists conducted by the Indiana University found that 34 percent of journalists say they have no religious affiliation, compared with 13 percent among the general population who said the same in a 2002 Pew Research Center survey.

The journalists were also asked how important religion or religious beliefs were to them. Roughly a third (35 percent) said they were “very important.” By comparison, the figure among the general population, as measured that same year by Gallup, was nearly double at 61 percent.

Continue reading "Menken: Bias has consequences" »

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

The Vatican told bishops around the world Monday that it is important to cooperate with police in reporting priests who rape and molest children and said they should develop guidelines for preventing sex abuse by next year.

But the suggestions in the letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are vague and nonbinding, and they contain no enforcement mechanisms to ensure bishops actually draft the guidelines or follow them.

That is a significant omission given that the latest scandal in the United States involves allegations Philadelphia's archbishop left accused priests in ministry despite purportedly tough U.S. guidelines, and evidence that Irish bishops were stonewalling an independent board overseeing compliance with the guidelines of the church in Ireland.

The document marks the latest effort by the Vatican to show it's serious about rooting out priestly pedophiles and preventing abuse following the eruption on a global scale of the abuse scandal last year with thousands of victims coming forward.

But it failed to impress advocates for victims who have long blamed the power of bishops bent on protecting the church and its priests for fueling the scandal. Without fear of punishment themselves, bishops frequently moved pedophile priests from parish to parish rather than reporting them to police or punishing them under church law.

"There's nothing that will make a child safer today or tomorrow or next month or next year," said Barbara Dorris, outreach director for the main U.S. victims group Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests.

Critically, the letter reinforces bishops' exclusive authority in dealing with abuse cases. It says independent lay review boards that have been created in some countries to oversee the church's child protection policies and ensure compliance "cannot substitute" for bishops' judgment and power.

Recently, such lay review committees in the U.S. and Ireland have reported that some bishops "failed miserably" in following their own guidelines and had thwarted the boards' work by withholding information and by enacting legal hurdles that made ensuring compliance impossible.

"Our central concern is that bishops and religious leaders retain enormous discretionary powers to decide if an allegation is credible," said Maeve Lewis, executive director of the Irish victims group One in Four.

Continue reading "Vatican suggests bishops report abuse to police" »

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Associated Press correspondent Selcan Hacaoglu reports:

Turkey has launched a project to conserve an ancient Armenian cathedral and church in what is seen as a gesture of reconciliation toward its neighbor.

Turkey and Armenia have been locked in a bitter dispute for decades over the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey in the last years of the Ottoman Empire. Efforts to normalize relations have been dealt a setback by the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan is a close Muslim ally of Turkey.

Turkey, however, says it is committed to improving ties with Armenia, and has already restored the 10th century Akdamar church, perched on a rocky island in Lake Van in eastern Turkey. It has also allowed once-yearly worship at the site as a gesture to Armenia and its own ethnic Armenian minority.

Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay said Tuesday the new project was being launched in partnership with the World Monuments Fund to conserve the remains of the cathedral and the Church of the Holy Savior in Ani, 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the eastern Turkish city of Kars.

According to the New York-based World Monuments Fund, Ani — "one of the world's great cities in the 10th century" — was once the site of hundreds of religious buildings, palaces, fortifications, and other structures. Today it stands abandoned, and the remnants of its celebrated buildings are in a precarious state.

The site, in an earthquake-prone area, has been listed on the World Monuments Watch since 1996.

"Ani, which is of global significance, presents particularly complicated challenges," Gunay said. "We hope that giving new life to the remains of once-splendid buildings, such as the Ani Cathedral and church, will bring new economic opportunities to the region."

Continue reading "In gesture, Turkey conserving Armenian churches" »

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The Associated Press reports:

An Australian bishop who was fired by Pope Benedict XVI after suggesting the church consider ordaining women and married men says the Vatican is becoming increasingly authoritarian.

The Vatican said Monday that Bishop William Morris of the Toowoomba diocese, west of Brisbane, had been "removed from pastoral care."

Morris says he was removed because of a letter he wrote to his parish in 2006 that suggested the church consider ordaining women and married men to help solve priest shortages. Currently, only celibate men can be ordained in the Roman Catholic church.

On Tuesday, Morris told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the Vatican has become increasingly authoritarian and dismissive of local bishops.

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The Associated Press reports:

Peruvian President Alan Garcia says Pope John Paul II should get credit for the death of Osama bin Laden.

The late pope was beatified on Sunday and Garcia says: "His first miracle was to remove from the world the incarnation of evil, the demonic incarnation of crime and hatred, giving us the news that the person who blew up towers and buildings is no longer."

Garcia made the comment Monday as he inaugurated a hydroelectric power station.

Garcia also says bin Laden's death also vindicates President George W. Bush's decision "to punish Bin Laden and patiently continue this work that has born fruit."

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Associated Press correspondent Hamza Hendawi reports:

Muslim clerics said Monday that Osama bin Laden's burial at sea was a violation of Islamic tradition that may further provoke militant calls for revenge attacks against American targets.

Although there appears to be some room for debate over the burial — as with many issues within the faith — a wide range of Islamic scholars interpreted it as a humiliating disregard for the standard Muslim practice of placing the body in a grave with the head pointed toward the holy city of Mecca.

Sea burials can be allowed, they said, but only in special cases where the death occurred aboard a ship.

"The Americans want to humiliate Muslims through this burial, and I don't think this is in the interest of the U.S. administration," said Omar Bakri Mohammed, a radical cleric in Lebanon.

A U.S. official said the burial decision was made after concluding that it would have been difficult to find a country willing to accept the remains. There was also speculation about worry that a grave site could have become a rallying point for militants.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters.

President Barack Obama said the remains had been handled in accordance with Islamic custom, which requires speedy burial, and the Pentagon later said the body was placed into the waters of the northern Arabian Sea after adhering to traditional Islamic procedures — including washing the corpse — aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson.

But the Lebanese cleric Mohammed called it a "strategic mistake" that was bound to stoke rage.

In Washington, CIA director Leon Panetta warned that "terrorists almost certainly will attempt to avenge" the killing of the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Bin Laden is dead," Panetta wrote in a memo to CIA staff. "Al-Qaida is not."

According to Islamic teachings, the highest honor to be bestowed on the dead is giving the deceased a swift burial, preferably before sunset. Those who die while traveling at sea can have their bodies committed to the bottom of the ocean if they are far off the coast, according to Islamic tradition.

Continue reading "Islamic scholars criticize bin Laden burial at sea" »

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The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based Muslim advocacy group, has issued a statement welcoming the 'elimination' of Osama bin Laden on Sunday by a team of Navy Seals in Pakistan Sunday:

"We join our fellow citizens in welcoming the announcement that Osama bin Laden has been eliminated as a threat to our nation and the world through the actions of American military personnel. As we have stated repeatedly since the 9/11 terror attacks, bin Laden never represented Muslims or Islam. In fact, in addition to the killing of thousands of Americans, he and Al Qaeda caused the deaths of countless Muslims worldwide. We also reiterate President Obama's clear statement tonight that the United States is not at war with Islam."

CAIR issued the statement at 1:17 a.m., less than two hours after Obama began his announcement.

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Associated Press correspondent Victor L. Simpson reports:

A visit to Rome's main synagogue. Diplomatic relations with Israel. A handwritten plea asking forgiveness for Christian persecution left at Judaism's holiest site in Jerusalem.

With his landmark actions, Pope John Paul II strove throughout his 27-year papacy to overcome the tortured two-millennia history of Catholic-Jewish relations.

In a sign of appreciation for those efforts, some in the crowd at his beatification Sunday in St. Peters's Square will be Jews, including an Israeli Cabinet minister who lost most of his family in the Holocaust but was hidden by a Belgium family who raised him as a Christian.

"We have a high respect, a unique respect for John Paul," Yossi Peled, a retired Israeli general, said Friday. "He is not just another pope for us."

The preparations for the beatification — the last formal step before possible sainthood — got under way in an official capacity Friday morning when John Paul's tomb was opened and his sealed casket removed for public viewing starting Sunday in St. Peter's Basilica.

The simple white marble tombstone that had marked John Paul's resting place in the grottoes underneath the basilica will be sent to a new church dedicated to him in Krakow, the Vatican said.

Eighty-seven official delegations have confirmed their presence at the ceremony, including 16 heads of state, six heads of government and members of five royal houses, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said.

Peled, a minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, said the participation of an Israeli Cabinet member at what is a religious event — the U.S. delegation is limited to its ambassador to the Holy See and two former envoys — is a sign of the importance given to John Paul's accomplishments.

Continue reading "On eve of beatification, Jews praise John Paul II" »

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Associated Press writer William C. Mann reports:

A government agency's annual report on violations of religious rights added Egypt on Thursday to the list of the world's 14 worst violators.

The situation there for religious minorities, especially Coptic Christians, has deteriorated markedly, even since former President Hosni Mubarak resigned in February, the report said.

China also is on the list of worst violators, compiled by the Commission on International Religious Freedom, and in his opening remarks as he released the report, commission Chairman Leonard Leo accused China of trying to hack into the commission's emails.

"They're trying awfully hard to read our private emails," Leo said. "So let me, if I may, take a brief moment to address these esteemed authorities publicly: For your reading enjoyment, you can go to our website and see all of our reports on your government.

"It's http://www.uscirf.gov ... and I'm sure you will find what you need."

The others on the list of "countries of particular concern" are repeats from last year: Myanmar, also known as Burma, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

The Egypt report said the commission was "acutely aware that the success of Egypt's current political transition depends on its full respect for the rule of law, including respect for fundamental human rights, of which religious freedom is critical."

The report said the government "engaged in and tolerated religious freedom violations" before and after Mubarak's departure.

"In his waning months, religious freedom conditions were rapidly deteriorating, and since his departure, we've seen nothing to indicate that these conditions have improved," the report said.

Because of the new designation, the report recommended that the U.S. take money from aid to Egypt earmarked for military use and use it "to enhance physical protection for Copts and other religious minorities.

Continue reading "U.S. adds Egypt to worst religious freedom violators" »

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The Archdiocese of Baltimore is hosting several events this weekend to celebrate the beatification on Sunday of Pope John Paul II.

The pontiff came to the archdiocese in October 1995, visiting the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the Our Daily Bread soup kitchen and St. Mary’s Seminary & University.

The pope also visited the Baltimore Basilica in 1976, as Cardinal Karol Wojtyla. The archdiocese has commemorated his visits with the Pope John Paul II Prayer Garden at Charles and Franklin streets, dedicated in October 2008.

His beatification Sunday in Rome will move him a step away from sainthood. The Baltimore archdiocese will celebrate the event with a succession of events Sunday and Monday. They include:

Sunday, May 1
10:45 a.m. Mass at the Baltimore Basilica

11:45 a.m. Eucharistic Procession from the Basilica to the Pope John Paul II Prayer Garden
Praying of the Divine Mercy Chaplet, Prayer Garden

4:30 p.m. Mass for young adults, Basilica

5:30 p.m. Eucharistic Procession following from Basilica to Pope John Paul II Prayer Garden
Praying of the Divine Mercy Chaplet, Prayer Garden

Monday, May 2
Students in all Catholic schools will recite special beatification prayer, and learn about life of Pope John Paul II and making of saints.

Continue reading "Baltimore archdiocese to celebrate JPII beatification" »

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Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington reports:

The newly elected prime minister of Tibet's government-in-exile predicted Wednesday that the 75-year-old Dalai Lama will return during his lifetime to the homeland he fled five decades ago.

In Dharmsala, India, the Tibetan spiritual leader's exile headquarters, Harvard legal scholar Lobsang Sangay was declared on Wednesday the winner of a vote cast by tens of thousands of Tibetans around the world, after the Buddhist leader said he wanted to devolve political authority to an elected leader.

Sangay grew up as a refugee, and his father, a former monk, fought as a guerrilla against China's occupation of Tibet. Sangay told reporters in Washington he would seek to restore the freedom, dignity and identity of Tibetans.

He also promised to reach out to China and pursue the Dalai Lama's stated desire for greater autonomy for Tibetans within China.

"Tibet is under occupation. There is political repression, ethnic assimilation, economic marginalization and environmental destruction," said the 43-year-old Sangay, dressed in a smart business suit. He said that if China wanted to become a world superpower, it could not do so through economic or military might but would need to exercise moral authority in how it treats people.

Sangay urged Beijing to review its "hard-line" Tibet policy and take a "more moderate and liberal approach." He said the government-in-exile remained ready for negotiations. Nine previous rounds of talks have made no headway.

Continue reading "New Tibetan PM expects Dalai Lama to return" »

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In other Obama religious holiday news, the president extended best wishes to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the start of Passover, the White House reports.

The weeklong holiday, which marks the biblical story of the Israelites' exodus from Egypt, began Monday night with a traditional seder meal.

Obama hosted a seder at the White House for the third straight year, the Associated Press reported.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Netanyahu expressed appreciation during their telephone conversation Monday for U.S. funding for a military weapons system that has intercepted several rockets aimed at Israeli communities, the AP rpeorted.

The leaders also discussed cooperation on counterterrorism, the Middle East peace process and violence in the Gaza Strip, Carney said.

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Associated Press correspondent Elaine Ganley reports:

Karima has a plan. If police stop her for wearing a veil over her face, she'll remove it — then put it back on once they're out of sight. If that doesn't work, she'll stay home, or even leave France.

For Muslim women in France who cover their faces with veils, it is the moment for making plans. Starting April 11, a new law banning garments that hide the face takes effect. Women who disobey it risk a fine, special classes and a police record.

The law comes as Muslims face what some see as a new jab at their religion: President Nicolas Sarkozy's party is holding a debate Tuesday on the place of Islamic practices, and Islam itself, in strictly secular but traditionally Catholic France.

The increasing focus on France's Muslims — who number at least 5 million, the largest such population in western Europe — comes with presidential elections a year away and support for a far-right party growing. A recent palpable rise in tensions has also been boosted by fears of a mass migration of Muslims due to disarray in the Arab world.

Interior Minister Claude Gueant put it bluntly Monday.

"This growth in the number of (Muslims) and a certain number of behaviors cause problems," he said in remarks carried on French radio. "There is no reason why the nation should accord to one particular religion more rights than religions that were formerly anchored in our country."

Continue reading "Veil ban comes amid tightening focus on Muslims" »

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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

American Red Cross

Caritas

Catholic Relief Services

Doctors Without Borders

Episcopal Relief and Development

International Rescue Committee

IMA World Health

Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief

Jewish Federations of North America

Mercy Corps

Oxfam America

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance

Salvation Army

World Relief

World Vision

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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" »

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

Pope Benedict XVI rejects the idea of Jesus as a political revolutionary and insists that violent revolution must never be carried out in God's name in a new book being released Thursday amid great fanfare at the start of Lent.

"Jesus of Nazareth - Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection," is the second installment of Benedict's planned trilogy on Jesus. Part I, which covered Jesus' early ministry, shot to the top of the best-seller lists in Italy when it was published in 2007.

Already, 1.2 million copies of Part II have been printed in seven languages, and reprints of 100,000 more are planned for the Italian editions and 50,000 in German.

In the book, Benedict exonerates the Jews as a people for Christ's death. He also insists that Jesus never advocated violent revolution, as some liberation theologians have suggested, saying violence was not His way no matter how valid the motivation.

Benedict has spoken out frequently to denounce religiously motivated violence against Christians in the Middle East, Pakistan and elsewhere. "The cruel consequences of religiously motivated violence are only too evident to us all," he noted in the book.

"Violence does not build up the kingdom of God, the kingdom of humanity. On the contrary, it is a favorite instrument of the Antichrist, however idealistic its religious motivation may be," Benedict wrote. "It serves, not humanity, but inhumanity."

Continue reading "Pope's new book: Never violence in God's name" »

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Associated Press correspondent Hamza Hendawi reports:

Clashes that broke out when a Muslim mob attacked thousands of Christians protesting the burning of a Cairo church killed at least 13 people and wounded about 140, officials said Wednesday.

The Muslims torched the church amid an escalation of tensions over a love affair between a Muslim and a Christian that set off a violent feud between the couple's families.

The officials said all 13 fatalities died of gunshot wounds.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The clashes late Tuesday night added to a sense of ongoing chaos in Egypt after the momentous 18-day democracy uprising that toppled longtime leader Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11. The uprising left a security vacuum after police pulled out of Cairo and several other cities three days into the uprising.

The police have yet to fully take back the streets, leaving space for a wave of violent crime and lawlessness in some parts of the nation.

Continue reading "13 dead in Christian-Muslim clashes in Egypt" »

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

Pope Benedict XVI has made a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus Christ, tackling one of the most controversial issues in Christianity in a new book.

In "Jesus of Nazareth-Part II" excerpts released Wednesday, Benedict explains biblically and theologically why there is no basis in Scripture for the argument that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for Jesus' death.

Interpretations to the contrary have been used for centuries to justify the persecution of Jews.

While the Catholic Church has for five decades taught that Jews weren't collectively responsible, Jewish scholars said Wednesday the argument laid out by the German-born pontiff, who has had his share of mishaps with Jews, was a landmark statement from a pope that would help fight anti-Semitism today.

"Holocaust survivors know only too well how the centuries-long charge of 'Christ killer' against the Jews created a poisonous climate of hate that was the foundation of anti-Semitic persecution whose ultimate expression was realized in the Holocaust," said Elan Steinberg of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.

The pope's book, he said, not only confirms church teaching refuting the deicide charge "but seals it for a new generation of Catholics."

Continue reading "Pope: Jews as whole not responsible for Jesus' death" »

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Associated Press correspondent Kirsten Grieshaber reports:

In a rare move that needed the pope's approval, a Lutheran convert was ordained Tuesday as a Catholic priest in Germany and is being allowed to remain married to his wife — who has already become a nun.

Harm Klueting, 61, was ordained by Archbishop Joachim Cardinal Meisner in a private ceremony at the city's seminary, the Cologne archdiocese said.

Pope Benedict XVI gave Klueting a special permission to remain married to his wife Edeltraut Klueting, who became a Catholic Carmelite nun in 2004.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican's chief spokesman, said the exception is rare but there have been similar cases.

"It doesn't happen every day," he said.

Klueting and his wife were Lutherans when they married in 1977 and both served as Lutheran clerics before converting to Catholicism several years ago. They have two grown children.

The Cologne archdiocese said in a statement that the couple would not have to take the traditional vow of celibacy as long as they remain married — a highly unusual move since celibacy is normally a key requirement for Catholic priests.

Klueting and his family could not be reached for comment, and it was not clear whether they still lived together as a couple.

Lombardi said he didn't have any specific information about the Kluetings, including what the pope said about the case.

Continue reading "Pope approves ordination of married father of two" »

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Associated Press correspondent Cassandra Vinograd reports:

In Britain, gay couples may get a chance to go to the chapel and get married — almost.

The British government on Thursday announced plans to allow gay couples to hold civil partnership ceremonies in houses of worship — a move gay rights activists say is a step in the right direction towards marriage, but falls short of affording full equal rights.

The government stressed, however, that houses of worship can opt out if they wish.

Although marriage and civil partnership are already similar under British law, civil partnership ceremonies are currently not allowed to have religious references, are banned from places of worship, and must take place in a public building overseen by a government registrar.

The new rules, being introduced under British equality laws, will give same-sex couples the chance to hold civil partnership ceremonies in religious buildings — an option that did not exist for Mark Harrison and his partner, who wore traditional tailcoats to their ceremony at a north London town hall in May 2009.

Harrison described himself as not religious "at all," but said its "about having the option" — all couples he knows who've married in churches are straight and not religious.

"It's the tradition and the dream to have a beautiful church wedding," he said. "If straight couples have that opportunity and want to get married in a church despite not being religious then it should be the same for everyone."

In Britain, only heterosexual couples can get married, while civil partnership is available only to same-sex couples. Activists argue both should be open to all couples.

Continue reading "Gay rights activists: New UK rules a positive step" »

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The Associated Press reports:

The Vatican has named a tiny shrine in a small northeast Wisconsin town as a holy site.

The Catholic Church has recognized the chapel in Champion, near Green Bay, as the location of an official sighting of the Virgin Mary. Milwaukee radio station WTMJ-AM says it is the only site in the country with that distinction.

Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay says the Virgin Mary appeared there three times to Belgium immigrant Adele Brise in 1859. Devotees have since visited the site to pray for miracles.

Ricken started investigating the events and three theological experts soon picked up the work. After two years of poring over letters and documents, experts decided her claims were true. The Vatican validated those results in December.

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Associated Press correspondent Alison Mutler reports:

There's more bad news in the cards for Romania's beleaguered witches.

A month after Romanian authorities began taxing them for their trade, the country's soothsayers and fortune tellers are cursing a new bill that threatens fines or even prison if their predictions don't come true.

Witches argue they shouldn't be blamed for the failure of their tools.

"They can't condemn witches, they should condemn the cards," Queen witch Bratara Buzea told The Associated Press by telephone.

Superstition is a serious matter in the land of Dracula, and officials have turned to witches to help the recession-hit country collect more money and crack down on tax evasion.

In January, officials changed labor laws to officially recognize the centuries-old practice as a taxable profession, prompting angry witches to dump poisonous mandrake into the Danube in an attempt to put a hex on the government.

The new draft bill passed in the Senate last week. It still must be approved by a financial and labor committee and by Romania's Chamber of Deputies, the other house of Romania's parliament.

Bratara called the proposed bill overblown. "I will fight until my last breath for this not to be passed," she said.

Continue reading "Bill would hold witches responsible for predictions" »

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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" »

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Police have arrested a 17-year old Pakistani boy for writing an allegedly blasphemous remark in an examination paper, an officer said Tuesday.

Pakistan's blasphemy laws have come under intense scrutiny since the murder last month of a prominent politician who had campaigned to change them. They allow for the death penalty for anyone found guilty of insulting Islam. Critics say they are often used to settle scores and unfairly target the country's non-Muslim minorities.

School authorities lodged a police complaint against the boy, identified as Sami Ullah, in January after reading an examination paper he took in the city of Karachi, said police officer Qudrat Shah Lodhi.

Lodhi said he could not repeat what the boy, who is a Muslim, had written because he would be committing blasphemy if he did. He said the boy told police he wrote the blasphemous material out of frustration when he was not able to answer the exam question.

"He submitted an apology to the examination authorities and feels ashamed and depressed," Lodhi said.

Continue reading "Pakistini student arrested for 'blasphemous' answer" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
        

The Associated Press reports:

Pope Benedict XVI says public officials today would do well to model themselves on Joan of Arc, the French saint who was tried for heresy and burned at the stake for her convictions.

Benedict highlighted the life of the 15th century mystic in his Wednesday audience, which over the past several months he has used to highlight important women in the church's history.

Joan of Arc led the French to several victories over the English during the Hundred Years War. She was tried for heresy and witchcraft and burned at the stake in 1431. Her conviction was later annulled and she was canonized in 1920.

Benedict says: "Hers is a beautiful example of holiness for lay people working in public life, particularly during the most difficult situations."

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

Pope Benedict XVI told priests over the weekend to do a better job counseling would-be spouses to ensure their marriages last and said no one has an absolute right to a wedding.

Benedict made the comments Saturday in his annual speech to the Roman Rota, the Vatican tribunal that decides marriage annulments. An annulment is the process by which the church effectively declares that a marriage never took place.

Benedict acknowledged that the problems that would allow for a marriage to be annulled cannot always be identified beforehand. But he said better pre-marriage counseling, which the Catholic Church requires of the faithful, could help avoid a "vicious circle" of invalid marriages.

He said the right to a church wedding requires that the bride and groom intend to celebrate and live the marriage truthfully and authentically.

"No one can make a claim to the right to a nuptial ceremony," he said.

Continue reading "Pope: No one has absolute right to marriage" »

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Categories: Catholicism, Faith Practices, International, People, Sexuality
        

Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

Pope Benedict XVI has signed off on the miracle needed to beatify Pope John Paul II and set May 1 as the date to honor one of the most beloved popes of all times as a model of saintliness for the church.

Benedict said in a decree Friday that a French nun's recovery from Parkinson's disease was miraculous, the last step needed for beatification. A second miracle is needed for the Polish-born John Paul to be made a saint.

The May 1 ceremony, which Benedict himself will celebrate, is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Rome — a major morale boost for a church reeling from a wave of violence against Christians and fallout from the clerical sex abuse scandal.

"This is a huge and important cause of joy," Warsaw Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz told reporters at his residence in the Polish capital.

Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul's longtime secretary and friend, expressed "huge thanks" to Benedict for the decree. "We are happy today," he said.

Benedict put John Paul on the fast track to possible sainthood just weeks after he died in 2005, responding to the chants of "Santo Subito!" or "Sainthood immediately!" that erupted during his funeral.

Benedict waived the typical five-year waiting period before the process could begin, but he insisted that the investigation into John Paul's life be thorough so as to not leave any doubts about his virtues.

John Paul's beatification will nevertheless be the fastest on record, coming just over six years after his death and beating out Mother Teresa's then-record beatification in 2003 by a few days.

Continue reading "Pope John Paul II set for beatification May 1" »

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Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien will celebrate Mass at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, the first anniversary of the earthquake that leveled Haiti.

O'Brien is inviting Catholics and others in the Archdiocese to "stand in prayerful solidarity" with the people of Haiti.

The archdiocese, which has a long-established Haiti Outreach Project, raised more than $730,000 last year for earthquake relief efforts.

Through a sister relationship with the Catholic Diocese of Gonaives, the archdiocese sponsors three schools, including the Cardinal William H. Keeler Trade School, and feeds 15,000 children each day. Eighteen parishes in the archdiocese have partnerships with parishes in Haiti, funding feeding programs and improving teacher salaries in schools.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has called on Catholics to participate in a novena — nine days of prayer — for the people of Haiti beginning on Wednesday. More information is availablet at the conference website.

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Associated Press correspondent Alison Mutler reports

MOGOSOIA, Romania – Solace for world leaders trying to enforce painful austerity measures: At least you're not running Romania.

Angry witches are using cat excrement and dead dogs to cast spells on the president and government who are forcing them to pay taxes. Also in the eye of the taxman are fortune tellers, who should have seen it coming.

And President Traian Basescu isn't laughing it off. In a country where superstition is mainstream, the president and his aides wear purple on Thursdays, allegedly to ward off evil spirits.

Witches from Romania's eastern and western regions will descend to the southern plains and the Danube River Thursday to threaten the government with spells and spirits. Mauve has a high vibration, it makes the wearer superior and wards off evil attacks, according to the esoteric group Violet Flame — which practices on Thursdays.

A dozen witches will head to the Danube to put a hex on the government and hurl mandrake into the river "so evil will befall them," said a witch named Alisia. She identified herself with one name, as is customary among witches.

"This law is foolish. What is there to tax, when we hardly earn anything?" she said by telephone on Wednesday. "The lawmakers don't look at themselves, at how much they make, their tricks; they steal and they come to us asking us to put spells on their enemies."

Continue reading "Witches casting spells to protest taxes" »

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Associated Press correspondent Maggie Michael reports:

CAIRO – In the weeks before the New Year's Day suicide bombing of an Egyptian church, al-Qaida-linked websites carried a how-to manual on "destroying the cross," complete with videos on how to build a bomb and the locations of churches to target — including the one that was attacked.

They may have found a receptive audience in Alexandria, where increasingly radicalized Islamic hard-liners have been holding weekly anti-Christian demonstrations, filled with venomous slogans against the minority community.

The blast, which struck Saturday as worshippers were leaving midnight Mass at the Mediterranean city's Saints Church, killed 21 people.

President Hosni Mubarak has accused foreign groups of being behind the attack, which has sparked a wave of angry protests by Christians in Egypt.

But on the ground, investigators are searching in a different direction — scrutinizing homegrown hard-liners, known as Salafis, and the possibility they were inspired by al-Qaida.

Continue reading "Anti-Christian drumbeat grew before Egypt attack" »

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Associated Press correspondents Asif Shahzad and Nahal Toosi report:

ISLAMABAD – The governor of Pakistan's most dominant province was shot and killed Tuesday by a bodyguard who authorities said was angry about his opposition to blasphemy laws carrying the death sentence for insulting the Muslim faith.

Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer, regarded as a moderate voice in a country increasingly beset by zealotry, was a close ally of U.S.-backed President Asif Ali Zardari. He is the highest-profile Pakistani political figure to be assassinated since former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto three years ago, and his death underscores the growing danger in this country to those who dare challenge the demands of Islamist extremists.

Taseer was riddled by gunshots while walking to his car after an afternoon meal at Kohsar Market, a shopping center in Islamabad popular with Westerners and wealthy Pakistanis.

Initial reports indicated the suspected gunman, a police commando guarding Taseer, unloaded up to 26 rounds from a Kalashnikov automatic rifle. The gunman could have fired that number of rounds in a matter of seconds.

Other guards then forced the police commando to the ground, according to police and hospital officials.

"It was one shot first and then a burst," said R.A. Khan, a witness who was drinking coffee at the time. "I rushed and saw policemen over another police commando, who was lying on the road with his face down."

Continue reading "Pakistani governor who opposed blasphemy law slain" »

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Associated Press correspondent Shawn Pogatchnik reports:

Ireland's constitutional ban on abortion violates pregnant women's right to receive proper medical care in life-threatening cases, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday, harshly criticizing Ireland's long inaction on the issue.

The Strasbourg, France-based court ruled that a pregnant woman fighting cancer should have been allowed to get an abortion in Ireland in 2005 rather than being forced to go to England for the procedure. The judgment put Ireland under pressure to draft a law extending abortion rights to women whose pregnancies represent a potentially fatal threat to their own health.

Ireland has resisted doing that despite a 1992 judgment from the Irish Supreme Court that said Ireland should provide abortions in cases where a woman's life is endangered — including, controversially, by her own threats to commit suicide.

The 18-year delay has created a legal limbo, forcing many women to travel overseas for an abortion rather than rely on Irish doctors fearful of being prosecuted.

In an 11-6 verdict, the 17 Strasbourg judges said Ireland was wrong to keep the legal situation unclear and said the Irish government had offered no credible explanation for its failure. The Irish judge on the panel, Mary Finlay Geoghegan, sided with that majority view.

The judges wrote that Ireland's failure "has resulted in a striking discordance between the theoretical right to a lawful abortion in Ireland on grounds of a relevant risk to a woman's life, and the reality of its practical implementation."

Under Irish law dating back to 1861, a doctor and patient both could be prosecuted for murder if an abortion was later deemed not to be medically necessary.

Continue reading "Court: Irish abortion ban violates women's rights" »

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The Associated Press reports:

A French court has annulled a fine given to a woman driver wearing an Islamic face veil, months before a ban on wearing the garments goes into effect.

Traffic police in the western city of Nantes fined 31-year-old Sandrine Mouleres euro22 ($29.22) in April, saying she did not have a clear field of vision, but the court quashed the fine Monday.

Jean-Michel Pollono, Mouleres' attorney, said the court in Nantes had ruled "we are in a free country, and as a result, everything that isn't forbidden is allowed."

The initial fine drew widespread attention amid a nationwide debate over the place of Islamic veils. In September, the French parliament agreed to a ban on face-covering veils — such as the niqab or burqa — from being worn in public. The ban goes into effect in spring.

Many Muslims see the legislation as another blow to Islam — France's No. 2 religion — and fear it could raise levels of Islamophobia in a country where mosques are sporadic targets of hate.

Continue reading "French court annuls fine for veil-wearing woman" »

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The Associated Press reports:

The Legionaries of Christ is ordering images of its disgraced founder removed from its buildings worldwide as part of Vatican-mandated reforms.

The conservative order says photographs showing the late Rev. Marciel Maciel alone or with the pope must be removed from its installations.

Maciel founded the influential Legion in Mexico in 1941. He was dogged for years by allegations that he abused seminarians. But it was only after his 2008 death that the order admitted the allegations were true and that Maciel had fathered three children.

The Legion also announced on its website Monday that it was prohibiting the celebration of Maciel's birthday. It also banned the sale of Maciel's writings inside Legion centers.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

Associated Press correspondent Amy Teibel reports:

Three dozen top Israeli rabbis threw their support Tuesday behind a religious ruling barring Jews from selling or renting homes to non-Jews — an indication of growing radicalism within the rabbinical community at a time of mounting friction between Israeli Arabs and Jews.

The action by the clerics — chief rabbis in some of Israel's largest cities and influential among the devout — fueled charges of racism.

The religious opinion first became a focus of controversy last year when the chief rabbi of Safed — a town in northern Israel that has a large concentration of devout Jews — urged that it be applied specifically to Arabs.

Nitai Morgenstern, an aide to Safed's chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliahu, said the town has "a problem of a lot of people renting and selling to Arabs, and that destroys the city's social fabric."

Recently, a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews asked other chief rabbis to express their support for the ruling to prove it has widespread backing, Morgenstern said Tuesday. Thirty-seven rabbis signed it. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the ruling with their signatures attached on Tuesday.

Mordechai Nagari, chief rabbi of Maaleh Adumim, a large West Bank settlement outside Jerusalem, defended the letter, which he signed. "The rabbinical ruling is that you cannot sell houses to gentiles, and its purpose is to protect the Jewish identity of the state of Israel," he told AP Television News.

Morgenstern said he understood how this attitude could cause friction with the Arab minority, which accounts for one-fifth of Israel's population of 7.6 million.

"But people have to see the other side," he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the initiative. "Israel categorically rejects these words" against its Arab citizens, Netanyahu said in a speech Tuesday evening in Jerusalem. "This must not happen in any democratic nation, and certainly not in the Jewish and democratic state" of Israel.

Continue reading "Israeli rabbis: Don't sell, rent property to non-Jews" »

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

The Vatican on Thursday released documentation showing Pope Benedict XVI sought as early as 1988 to find quicker ways to permanently remove priests who raped and molested children but was rebuffed.

A 1988 letter from then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger could serve as the Vatican's best defense to date that the future pope wanted to quickly remove pedophile priests but found himself stymied by church law.

In the letter, republished in Thursday's Vatican newspaper, Ratzinger complained that church law made it exceedingly difficult to remove abusers if they didn't request to be laicized voluntarily. He asked to get around the problem by finding "a quicker and simpler procedure" than a cumbersome church trial to punish those priests who "during their ministry were found guilty of grave and scandalous behavior."

He was turned down on the grounds that the priests' ability to defend themselves would be compromised.

The documentation was included in an article in L'Osservatore Romano explaining an upcoming revision of church law, which was last updated in 1983.

The article, penned by the No. 2 in the Vatican's legal office, highlighted some of the problems and loopholes of the 1983 Code of Canon Law's penal section that presumably will be addressed in the revision.

The Vatican has long sought to portray Benedict as having done more than anyone else at the Vatican to crack down on pedophile priests. But it has usually cited as his starting point a 2001 decision to have all abuse cases sent to his then-office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Continue reading "Benedict sought to remove abusive priests sooner" »

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

Pope Benedict XVI says in a new book that condoms can be justified for male prostitutes seeking to stop the spread of HIV, a stunning comment for a church criticized for its opposition to condoms and for a pontiff who has blamed them for making the AIDS crisis worse.

The pope made the comments in a book-length interview with a German journalist, "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times," which is being released Tuesday. The Vatican newspaper ran excerpts on Saturday.

Church teaching has long opposed condoms because they are a form of artificial contraception, although it has never released an explicit policy about condoms and HIV. The Vatican has been harshly criticized for its opposition.

Benedict said that condoms are not a moral solution. But he said in some cases, such as for male prostitutes, they could be justified "in the intention of reducing the risk of infection."

Benedict called it "a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way of living sexuality."

He used as an example male prostitutes, for whom contraception is not an issue, as opposed to married couples where one spouse is infected. The Vatican has come under pressure from even some church officials in Africa to condone condom use for monogamous married couples to protect the uninfected spouse from getting infected.

Benedict drew the wrath of the United Nations, European governments and AIDS activisits when he told reporters en route to Africa in 2009 that the AIDS problem on the continent couldn't be resolved by distributing condoms.

"On the contrary, it increases the problem," he said then.

Journalist Peter Seewald, who interviewed Benedict over the course of six days this summer, raised the Africa condom comments and asked Benedict if it wasn't "madness" for the Vatican to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms.

"There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility," Benedict said.

But he stressed that it wasn't the way to deal with the evil of HIV, and elsewhere in the book reaffirmed church teaching on contraception and abortion, saying: "How many children are killed who might one day have been geniuses, who could have given humanity something new, who could have given us a new Mozart or some new technical discovery?"

He reiterated the church's position that abstinence and marital fidelity is the only sure way to prevent HIV.

Continue reading "Pope: Condoms may be justified in some cases" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville. He is traveling in Israel with the Maryland Clergy Initiative, sponsored by the Baltimore Jewish Council and the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies.

JERUSALEM – I don’t know what I was expecting, but somehow it wasn’t what I expected.

Earlier this week I walked on the Temple Mount, the site where the first and second Temples stood. Today it houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. For all the controversy that surrounds it, the Temple Mount is a very peaceful place – it’s a broad plaza populated by tourists, most of them apparently on organized tours.

For years I’ve studied various biblical passages about the events that took place on this site; I’ve looked at pictures and satellite images and helicopter flyovers to try to get something useful in my mind’s eye. It looked from a distance about how I thought it would, but the feeling of walking on it was the feeling of walking on an alien world. That’s not all too unusual, as that’s what walking through the rest of Jerusalem felt like too. But whatever connection I may have with the place spiritually, theologically … I don’t know that any connection was an experiential reality for me.

Some of this disconnect may come from the fact that I know enough about the history of the place to know that there is virtually no place one can stand that is as it was in the first century. Jerusalem has changed hands a number of times since then, and as we walked through the tunnels next to the Western Wall of the Temple Mount we learned about the ways successive administrations carried out massive building projects that would be impressive today but are stunning in scope for a pre-industrial age. The result of these building projects, though, is that streets in the neighborhood aren’t at the same levels they were two thousand years ago. So in a couple of days when we walk the Via Dolorosa, the path of Jesus’ journey carrying his cross, we will not be walking the same stones he walked.

Continue reading "Poling: A mountaintop experience…maybe" »

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The Associated Press reports:

A prominent Egyptian blogger jailed for four years for writings deemed insulting to Islam and for calling President Hosni Mubarak "a symbol of tyranny" has been released, his brother said Wednesday.

Abdel Kareem Nabil was the first blogger in Egypt convicted specifically for his writings in a case that government critics said was intended to serve as a warning to others.

His prosecution was part of a government crackdown on bloggers and media outlets and drew a flood of condemnation from international and Egyptian rights groups.

He was released Monday after being held 10 days beyond the end of his sentence without explanation, said his brother, Abdel Rahman. The Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information said last week that during that time he was subjected to repeated beatings by an officer at the State Security Investigation office in Alexandria.

His brother said Wednesday that Nabil needed a rest before talking to media and that the family was not yet prepared to release a statement.

Nabil, who wrote under the name Kareem Amer, was an unusually scathing critic of conservative Muslims.

Much of his criticism was directed at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, the pre-eminent institution of religious thought in Sunni Islam, where he was studying law.

He denounced the school as "the university of terrorism," accusing it of promoting radical ideas and suppressing free thought. Al-Azhar "stuffs its students' brains and turns them into human beasts ... teaching them that there is not place for differences in this life," he wrote.

In other writings, he called Al-Azhar the "other face of the coin of al-Qaida" and called for the university to be dissolved or turned into a secular institution.

Continue reading "Egypt frees blogger convicted of insulting Islam" »

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We met several Iraqi Mandaeans in Jordan and Syria a couple of years ago while reporting stories about the Iraqi refugee crisis.

Members of the tiny sect, which follows the teachings of John the Baptist, have been targeted in ethnic violence in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. About 60,000 have fled Iraq or Iran in recent years for the relative safety of neighboring countries.

Now the Associated Press reports that the United Nations is having difficulty resettling Iraqi Mandaeans, and acknowledging that the challenge is putting the group at risk.

Vincent Cochetel, who represents the United States and the Caribbean for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told the AP that no single country wants to take all of the Mandaeans. He said nations typically don't accept entire ethnic or religious groups and that countries face capacity issues.

Dr. Wisam Breegi, a Mandaean who lives in Boston, told the AP that members of the religion need to resettle together or it will disappear. The Boston area has one of the larger U.S. populations with around 450.

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

This week I have the privilege of joining two dozen of my colleagues on an interfaith clergy trip to Israel. Rabbis, ministers, scholars, priests and a bishop ... we have the makings of unlimited jokes as well as deep theological intercourse.

This trip, called the Maryland Clergy Initiative, is being co-sponsored by the Baltimore Jewish Council and the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies. In addition to visiting major sites in Jerusalem and Galilee, we will meet with several of the leading voices on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I look forward to posting to In Good Faith as often as our schedule and wireless connections allow. My colleagues will also be contributing on the MCI trip blog.

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The Associated Press reports:

The Anti-Defamation League is criticizing remarks by Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck about billionaire financier George Soros and the Holocaust.

The conservative pundit described Soros this week as a "Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps."

But he also said he can't imagine what it must have been like trying to survive.

Soros survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary and donates to liberal causes.

ADL National Director Abraham Foxman says Beck's remarks about Soros' childhood were "inappropriate, offensive and over the top."

Foxman later told Salon.com that he still believes Beck is a strong supporter of Israel and the Jewish people.

A Beck spokesman cited an Oct. 22 letter from Foxman praising Beck as a "friend of Israel." The letter was posted Friday on Beck's website.

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Associated Press correspondent Diaa Hadid reports:

A mysterious blogger who set off an uproar in the Arab world by claiming he was God and hurling insults at the Prophet Muhammad is now behind bars — caught in a sting that used Facebook to track him down.

The case of the unlikely apostate, a shy barber from the backwater West Bank town of Qalqiliya, is highlighting the limits of tolerance in the Western-backed Palestinian Authority — and illustrating a new trend by authorities in the Arab world to mine social media for evidence.

Residents of Qalqiliya say they had no idea that Walid Husayin — the 26-year-old son of a Muslim scholar — was leading a double life.

Known as a quiet man who prayed with his family each Friday and spent his evenings working in his father's barbershop, Husayin was secretly posting anti-religion rants on the Internet during his free time.

Now, he faces a potential life prison sentence on heresy charges for "insulting the divine essence." Many in this conservative Muslim town say he should be killed for renouncing Islam, and even family members say he should remain behind bars for life.

"He should be burned to death," said Abdul-Latif Dahoud, a 35-year-old Qalqiliya resident. The execution should take place in public "to be an example to others," he added.

Over several years, Husayin is suspected of posting arguments in favor of atheism on English and Arabic blogs, where he described the God of Islam as having the attributes of a "primitive Bedouin." He called Islam a "blind faith that grows and takes over people's minds where there is irrationality and ignorance."

If that wasn't enough, he is also suspected of creating three Facebook groups in which he sarcastically declared himself God and ordered his followers, among other things, to smoke marijuana in verses that spoof the Muslim holy book, the Quran. At its peak, Husayin's Arabic-language blog had more than 70,000 visitors, overwhelmingly from Arab countries.

His Facebook groups elicited hundreds of angry comments, detailed death threats and the formation of more than a dozen Facebook groups against him, including once called "Fight the blasphemer who said 'I am God.'"

Continue reading "Palestinian held for Facebook criticism of Islam" »

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The Associated Press reports.

Pope Benedict XVI has told Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the discrimination and violence Catholics suffer in the Mideast and said he hopes relations between the local churches and authorities can improve.

The Vatican released the text of a letter Benedict wrote Ahmadinejad after receiving a letter from the Iranian leader last month. Ahmadinejad had thanked the pontiff for opposing a Florida pastor's threat to burn the Quran on the Sept. 11 anniversary.

In his letter, dated Nov. 3 but released only Thursday, Benedict noted that a recent meeting of Mideast bishops had decried the discrimination many Catholics face in the region. He said he hoped a bilateral commission would help address the legal status of the Catholic Church in Iran.

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Associated Press correspondent Sarah Brumfield reports:

A Muslim civil rights group said Tuesday it's concerned that the U.S. government is delaying the shipment of passports to those who are trying to make religious pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations raised the issue after a northern Virginia mosque reported that 17 people missed their flight to Saudi Arabia when their passports were temporarily seized. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol bought replacement tickets for those passengers, the mosque said.

On Tuesday, the council said it had learned of three other packages sent via UPS from California containing pilgrims' passports with hajj visas — for travel to Mecca — being held up by security checks or government seizure.

"The American Muslim community needs to know whether packages sent from point to point within our borders are being screened based on the religion of the sender or recipient, and whether or not such packages can be seized and opened by government officials without a warrant," said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper.

Hajj, a pilgrimage to Islam's holiest city, Mecca, is a requirement for all able-bodied Muslims who can afford it. The pilgrimage is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and many people save for months or years to pay for the trip, said Khadija Athman, the council's national civil rights manager.

Continue reading "Muslim group: U.S. delaying pilgrims' passports" »

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A conservative Muslim government minister admits he shook hands with first lady Michelle Obama in welcoming her to Indonesia but says it wasn't his choice.

Footage on YouTube shows otherwise, sparking a debate that has lit up Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the blogosphere.

"I tried to prevent (being touched) with my hands but Mrs. Michelle held her hands too far toward me (so) we touched," Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring told tens of thousands of followers on Twitter.

While Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, the vast majority practice a moderate form of the faith. But Sembiring has flaunted his conservatism and says he avoids contact with women who are not related to him.

The minister was among the dignitaries in a receiving line that greeted President Barack Obama and his wife as they arrived in Jakarta on Tuesday — a homecoming of sorts for the president who spent part of his childhood here. Indonesians gathered around television sets across the country to watch the American president touch down. Children at the school he attended practiced a song dedicated to him just in case he visited.

In footage of the official welcome, Sembiring appeared to share his countrymen's enthusiasm. He smiled broadly as he shook the president's hand and then reached with both hands to grasp Michelle Obama's. But later he said she forced their contact.

His denial was in a response to tweets from Indonesians who noted the handshake and questioned his long-standing claims that, as a good Muslim, he restricts his contact with women.

Many posts had a "gotchya" quality to them.

One female journalist — who said the minister had refused to shake her hand — gleefully noted that now he would no longer be able to wriggle out of it.

Sembiring has often tweeted controversial comments, including blaming natural disasters on a lack of morality and joking about AIDS.

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The Associated Press reports:

President Barack Obama says he believes the United States is on "the right path" to a better relationship with the Muslim world, but acknowledges that policy differences will continue.

Standing next to Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at a joint news conference in Jakarta, Obama said he has worked hard to repair frayed relations with the Muslim community.

He called his administration's efforts to repair relations with the Muslim world "earnest, sustained." But Obama also said he doesn't think "we're going to completely eliminate some of the misunderstandings and mistrust that have developed."

The president said he wants to make sure America is "building bridges and expanding our interactions with Muslin countries."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Associated Press correspondent Jill Lawless reports:

Five Church of England bishops announced Monday they are converting to Catholicism following an invitation to disaffected Anglicans from Pope Benedict XVI — the highest-profile defectors among conservatives opposed to gay bishops and female clergy.

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales said Bishop of Ebbsfleet Andrew Burnham, Bishop of Richborough Keith Newton, Bishop of Fulham John Broadhurst — as well as retired bishops Edwin Barnes and David Silk — have decided "to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church."

Burnham and Newton are "flying bishops," who minister to Church of England parishes where congregations have voted not to allow a woman priest to preside at services.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans, said he had accepted the resignations of Burnham and Newton, "with regret."

"We wish them well in this next stage of their service to the Church," he said.

Broadhurst, leader of the traditionalist group Forward in Faith, announced his intention to leave the Church of England last month, accusing the Anglican church of being "fascist in its behavior" and marginalizing those opposed to the ordination of women.

Continue reading "Five Anglican bishops to join Catholic Church" »

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The following is a dispatch from Jeff and Martha Landaw. Jeff Landaw is a copy editor at The Baltimore Sun.

The “modern” Orthodox community, Rabbi Daniel Sperber says, “is becoming less ‘modern’ and more Orthodox.”

Sperber, who left his native Wales at age two, is the rabbi of a congregation in the Old City of Jerusalem and chair of Talmud and Jewish history at Bar-Ilan University, Israel’s Orthodox institution of higher learning. He has written many books, including a history of Jewish customs, and scores of articles on Jewish history, language and halacha, or Jewish law. He represents the Israeli rabbinate in interfaith organizations and won the Israel Prize in 1992.

He spoke Monday night at Netivot Shalom, a modern Orthodox congregation in Pikesville, on “21st Century Halacha: Obligations, Opportunities in Hazards.”

The 20th and 21st centuries, Sperber told an audience of about 45, brought “tremendous changes to the world of Judaism” in science and technology, where halacha “to a certain extent has been able to face up to the new challenges;” in social affairs such as the role of women and in ideological matters such as the establishment of a Jewish state run as a democracy: What happens, he asks, if Israel’s majority decides to do something that violates halacha?

The Orthodox world has dealt with the “uncertainty” and “perplexity” brought on by these changes in two ways, Sperber says. One is to “retreat behind the walls,” condemning all change as a threat to “the nostalgic picture of what Judaism was.” The haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, community, and “the so-called right wing of modern Orthodoxy,” take their cue from the 18th- and 19th-century Talmudist and teacher known as the Chatam Sofer, who ruled that “chadash assur min ha-Torah,” or, “Innovation is forbidden by the Torah.” That began, Sperber says, as a technical point about the laws of the harvest; was applied “out of context” to Orthodoxy’s conflict with the new Reform movement in Germany and Hungary (and even among the Orthodoxc, Sperber says, it was considered “a very extreme statement”) and finally became a universal rule.

Continue reading "Sperber: Less modern, more Orthodox" »

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

Pope Benedict XVI strongly defended traditional families and the rights of the unborn Sunday, directly attacking Spanish laws that allow gay marriage, fast-track divorce and easier abortions as he dedicated Barcelona's iconic church, the Sagrada Familia.

It was the second time in as many days that Benedict had criticized the policies of Spain's Socialist government and called for Europe as a whole to rediscover Christian teachings and apply them to everyday life.

As he headed to the church named for the sacred family, about 200 gays and lesbians staged a 'kiss-in' to protest his visit and church policies on homosexuals, condom use and a host of other issues. Church teaching holds that gays should be treated with dignity and respect but that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered."

Benedict has focused much of his pontificate on trying to fight secular trends in the West such as the legal recognition of same-sex unions. Benedict has visited Spain twice so far and has a third trip planned next year, an indication he sees this once staunchly Roman Catholic country as a battleground for the future of the faithful in Europe.

During his homily Sunday, Benedict noted that the Sagrada Familia church, a soaring, Art Nouveau marvel begun over a century ago, was initially conceived of as a temple to the family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

As he inaugurated the church's main altar, he railed against same-sex marriage and divorce, saying families are built on the "indissoluble love of a man and a woman" who should be provided with financial and social benefits from governments. The pontiff also consecrated the building for use as a church in a colorful ceremony seldom seen performed by a pope.

Continue reading "Gay protesters stage 'kiss-in' as pope drives by" »

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Associated Press correspondent Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili reports:

Iran's foreign minister said Wednesday that no final decision has been made about a woman who could be stoned to death for adultery, amid reports that her execution was imminent.

Manouchehr Mottaki's statement follows an international outcry over the stoning sentence against the 43-year-old woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.

"Everyone has to be punished for murder," Mottaki said at a news conference in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. "The person has killed her husband and I think this fact will be considered as a crime in every country ... But in this case the final decision has not been made yet."

Earlier Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner also said in a statement that Mottaki had told him that a final verdict in Ashtiani's case has not been issued yet and that reports "about her eventual execution don't correspond to reality." But Kouchner said France is "very worried" about the case.

Iran has temporarily suspended the stoning verdict and has suggested Ashtiani might be hanged instead.

The case has further elevated tensions between Iran and the West, already running high over suspicions about Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

The office of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his wife Laureen Harper sent an open letter to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad calling for Ashtiani's release. Mrs. Harper wrote that she was "deeply troubled by the flagrant disregard of women's rights in Iran" and said Ashtiani's case "is an affront to any sense of moral or human decency."

Continue reading "Iran foreign minister: No verdict in adultery stoning" »

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Associated Press correspondent Mark Stevenson reports:

A chapel where Roman Catholic priests celebrate Mass every Sunday bears a plaque thanking the donor who built it — the leader of one of Mexico's most violent drug cartels.

The revelation has the church distancing itself from the property in central Mexico, while admitting it knows of other donations from drug traffickers.

"We know that the narcos ... look for a way to redeem themselves in religious terms, by doing some good work. Obviously, sins cannot be washed away by a donation or a collection," said the Rev. Hugo Valdemar, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Mexico, the country's largest.

"We have examples of five or six cases of projects, generally in rural communities, where they don't just build churches, they build roads and bridges and clinics," he said.

On a wall of the brightly painted chapel in the village of Tezontle, a plaque says it was donated by the leader of the violent Zetas cartel.

"Donated by Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, Lord, hear my prayer," reads the bronze-colored marker, which says the chapel was built in honor of Pope John Paul II.

Continue reading "Mass held in Mexico chapel built by drug lord" »

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Associated Press correspondent Robert Wielaard reports

The spokesman for Andre Leonard, Belgium's ultraconservative archbishop, quit Tuesday, saying he can no longer speak for a "loose canon," who has shocked Catholics by sympathizing with priests accused of pedophilia and condemning homosexuals.

The resignation of spokesman Juergen Mettepenningen reflected turmoil in Belgium's Catholic Church that began with a June 24 police raid on church offices, part of an investigation into hundreds of cases of sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests.

Aggravating matters — at a time when the church needed public support — Leonard has aired conservative views, calling AIDS "immanent justice" for homosexuals and saying that prosecuting retired priests for child abuse cases would be "vengeful."

Mettepenningen said Leonard is out of touch with Belgium's Catholic base.

"At times, he behaved like a loose cannon who thinks everybody else is wrong," Mettepenningen said at a news conference. "I was his GPS for three months. But it is the driver who has his hands on the wheel and sets the course."

In recent weeks, mainstream Catholic organizations have publicly spoken out against Leonard's conservative views.

On Tuesday, socialist legislator Jean-Marie de Meester filed a complaint against him with Belgium's anti-racism center for his "homophobic" viewpoints.

Continue reading "Spokesman for 'loose canon' archbishop quits" »

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Associated Press correspondents Barbara Surk and Hamid Ahmed report:

Iraq's dwindling Christian community was grieving and afraid on Monday after militants seized a Baghdad church during evening Mass, held the congregation hostage and triggered a raid by Iraqi security forces. The bloodbath left at least 52 people killed and 67 wounded — nearly everyone inside.

The attack, claimed by an al-Qaida-linked organization, was believed to be the dealiest ever recorded against Iraq's Christians, whose numbers have plummeted since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as the community has fled to other countries.

Outside Our Lady of Deliverance church, Raed Hadi leaned against the car carrying his cousin's coffin, waiting for the police to let him bury him on church grounds.

"It was a massacre in there and now they are cleaning it up," he said Monday morning. "We Christians don't have enough protection ... What shall I do now? Leave and ask for asylum?"

"Now they make a show," said Jamal Jaju, who watched as Iraqi forces set up a chain link fence around the church and pushed back observers. "What can I say? I lost at least 20 friends in there."

Pope Benedict XVI denounced the assault as "ferocious" and called for renewed international efforts to broker peace in the region. Catholics made up 2.89 percent of Iraq's population in 1980; by 2008 they were merely 0.89 percent.

Continue reading "Iraqi Christians mourn after church siege kills 52" »

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The Associated Press reports:

Pope Benedict XVI says all countries have the right to regulate immigration flows and protect their borders, and immigrants must respect the laws and national identity of their host nations.

The pontiff said in a message that every person has a right to migrate in search of better living conditions.

The Vatican on Tuesday issued the pope's message for the church's World Day for Migrants and Refugees, which is celebrated Jan. 16.

Benedict said that, as the word's societies become more multiethnic and intercultural, people should seek dialogue and respect each other's differences. States must respect the dignity of all migrants and share their resources, while immigrants "have the duty to integrate into the host country."

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The Associated Press reports:

The Vatican on Monday released a letter from the pope to seminarians again expressing "profound shame and regret" for the sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the global Roman Catholic church.

He said that "thank God, all of us know exemplary priests" who have chosen a life of celibacy.

Some have questioned whether celibacy is in part to blame, but the Vatican insists celibacy isn't responsible.

Recently two bishops from the scandal-hit Belgian church openly questioned the celibacy requirement.

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A Church of England assistant bishop and a parish church have announced that they intend to become Roman Catholics within a new structure set up by Pope Benedict XVI.

John Broadhurst, the bishop of Fulham in London, and St. Peter's Church in Folkestone, southeastern England, both oppose moves in the Church of England to allow women to serve as bishops.

Broadhurst, the first serving Church of England bishop to say he will accept the pope's invitation, is leader of Forward in Faith, a group representing traditionalists within the Church of England. He announced his decision on Friday at the group's national assembly.

St. Peter's Church, which is affiliated with Forward in Faith, announced its decision on Saturday.

Benedict has created a structure called an ordinariate, in which Church of England defectors could continue to use some of their traditional liturgy and be served by their married priests.

"I intend to resign as bishop of Fulham before the end of the year," Broadhurst told the Forward in Faith meeting.

"I am not retiring, I am resigning," he added. "Secondly, I expect that I will enter the ordinariate when it is established."

The parochial church council of St. Peter's said it had resolved to join the ordinariate and "is anxious that this should be made as easy as possible."

Continue reading "Anglican bishop plans Catholic conversion" »

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

Pope Benedict XVI formally created a new Vatican office Tuesday to revive Christianity in Europe, his latest attempt to counter secular trends in traditionally Christian countries.

In a decree, Benedict said the new office would promote church doctrine, use the media to get the church's message out and mobilize missionary-type activities.

But even on its first day of existence, the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization ran into an all-too-typical Vatican snag: The four-page decree instituting the office was issued in only Latin and Italian.

Asked how the pope expected to bring the church's message to the world in such relatively unknown languages, the head of the new office, Monsignor Rino Fisichella said he hadn't been in charge until Tuesday and wasn't responsible for how the decree was issued.

He stressed that he planned to have language sections in his department to deal with the faithful in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German and Slavic languages.

Continue reading "Pope outlines new effort to revive Christianity" »

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The Associated Press reports:

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas acknowledges she touched a nerve with remarks about Israel that led to her retirement. But in a radio interview, she says the comments were "exactly what I thought," even though she realized soon afterward that it was the end of her job.

"I hit the third rail. You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive," Thomas told Ohio station WMRN-AM in a sometimes emotional 35-minute interview that aired Tuesday. It was recorded a week earlier by WMRN reporter Scott Spears at Thomas' Washington, D.C., condominium.

Thomas, 90, stepped down from her job as a columnist for Hearst News Service in June after a rabbi and independent filmmaker videotaped her outside the White House calling on Israelis to get "out of Palestine." She gave up her front row seat in the White House press room, where she had aimed often pointed questions at 10 presidents, going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower.

She has kept a low profile since then.

It was "very hard for the first two weeks," Thomas said. "After that, I came out of my coma."

Rabbi David Nesenoff, who runs the website rabbilive.com, said he approached Thomas after he'd been at the White House for Jewish Heritage Day on May 27. He asked whether she had any comments on Israel.

"Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine," she replied.

"Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land. It's not Germany, it's not Poland," she continued. Asked where they should go, she answered, "They should go home."

"Where's home?" Nesenoff asked.

"Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else," Thomas replied.

"I told him exactly what I thought," she told Spears.

Continue reading "Helen Thomas on anti-Semite charge: 'Baloney!'" »

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Six rabbis from West Bank settlements have taken a step to defuse tension over the burning of a West Bank mosque, apparently by extremist settlers — they presented 20 new Quran books to replace those damaged in the blaze, the Associated Press reports.

During their visit to the mosque in the village of Beit Fajjar, Palestinian residents held charred pages of the burned Quran books.

Israeli politicians rushed to condemn the attack. It came as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators try to salvage peace talks by working out a deal over Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank.

Rabbi Menachem Froman, who led Tuesday's reconciliatory visit, said those who committed the attack "oppose peace."

The attackers left Hebrew slogans on the mosque walls. Israeli police are investigating.

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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.”

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Moderate Muslims in Macedonia are urging the government and the international community to crack down on radical Wahhabi groups on the rise in the country, the Associated Press reports.

The head of Macedonia's official Islamic Religious Community, Suleyman Rexhepi, says he wants "radical measures" against the Wahhabis by the government, the U.S. and the European Union.

The radical brand of Islam embraced by al-Qaida and the Taliban is seen as gaining a foothold in the Balkans, and Rexhepi claimed Monday that the sect wants to "to distort (Macedonia's) image."

Rexhepi's group is engaged in a power struggle with the Wahhabis, who are thought to control five mosques in the capital, Skopje. Most of Macedonia's ethnic Albanian minority — a quarter of the population of 2.1 million — are Muslims.

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Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press reports:

The Vatican declared Pope Benedict XVI's four-day visit to Britain a "great success" Sunday, saying the pontiff was able to reach out to a nation wary of his message and angry at his church's sex abuse scandal.

On his final day, Benedict praised British heroics against the Nazis to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and moved an Englishman a step closer to possible sainthood.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the important thing wasn't so much the turnout — crowds were much smaller than when Pope John Paul II visited in 1982 — but that Benedict's warning about the dangers of an increasingly secularized society had been received "with profound interest" from Britons as a whole.

Indeed, the British media coverage was remarkable in the seriousness with which newspapers and television took Benedict's message, and TV stations ran virtually all of the pope's speeches, Masses and other events live.

"Everyone is agreed about the great success, not so much from the point of view of the numbers, but ... by the fact that the message of the pope was received with respect and joy by the faithful," Lombardi told reporters.

Prime Minister David Cameron, in his farewell speech before Benedict's departure ceremony, said the pope had "challenged the whole country to sit up and think, and that can only be a good thing."

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Pope Benedict XVI said Saturday he was ashamed of the "unspeakable" sexual abuse of children by priests, telling the British faithful during Mass in Westminster Cathedral that he was deeply sorry and hoped the church's humiliation would help victims heal, the Associated Press reports.

Benedict also said he hoped the church would be able to use its contrition to purify itself of the "sins" of its ministers and renew its commitment to educating the young.

Benedict addressed the abuse scandal head-on during his homily, which was broadcast live on British television, a day after six people were arrested in an alleged terrorist plot against him. They remained in custody Saturday.

The sex abuse scandal has clouded Benedict's four-day state visit to this deeply secular nation with a centuries-old history of anti-Catholic sentiment. Polls have indicated widespread dissatisfaction in Britain with the way Benedict has handled the crisis, with Catholics nearly as critical of him as the rest of the population.

Anger over the abuse scandal runs high in Britain in part because of the enormous scale of the abuse in neighboring Ireland, where government reports have detailed systematic abuse of children at church-run schools and cover-up on the part of church authorities.

The pontiff issued his comments in the seat of English Catholicism amid indications he would meet with British abuse victims, and as abuse survivors and others opposed to his visit prepared a march Saturday afternoon in London's Hyde Park to demand more accountability.

"I express my deep sorrow to the innocent victims of these unspeakable crimes, along with my hope that the power of Christ's grace, his sacrifice of reconciliation, will bring deep healing and peace to their lives," Benedict said.

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British police arrested five London street cleaners over an alleged threat to Pope Benedict XVI on Friday, the second day of a papal trip to Britain that has brought both a warm welcome from Catholics and renewed anger over the clerical sex abuse scandal, the Associated Press reports.

The Vatican said the pope was calm despite the pre-dawn arrests and planned no changes to his schedule.

Acting on a tip, police detained the men, aged 26 to 50, under the Terrorism Act at a cleaning depot in central London after receiving information about a possible threat. The men are being questioned at a London police station and have not been charged. Police said an initial search of that business and other related properties has not uncovered any hazardous items.

The pope's visit has divided opinion in officially Protestant, highly secular Britain. The trip has been overshadowed by disgust over the Catholic Church's clerical abuse scandal and opposition from secularists and those opposed to the church's stances against homosexuality and using condoms to fight AIDS.

The detained suspects worked for a contractor on behalf of Westminster Council, the authority responsible for much of central London. The pope will still address British politicians, businessmen and cultural leaders in Westminster Hall, part of the Houses of Parliament, later Friday.

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Pope Benedict XVI began a controversial visit to Britain on Thursday by acknowledging that the Catholic Church had not acted decisively or quickly enough against priests who molested children, the Associated Press reports. He said the church's top priority now was to help abuse victims heal.

The pope's comments to reporters traveling with him from Rome marked his most thorough admission to date of church failures to stop pedophile priests, but they again failed to satisfy victims' groups. The issue has reignited with recent revelations of hundreds of victims in Belgium, including at least 13 of whom committed suicide.

Benedict's four-day state visit has been overshadowed by disgust over the abuse scandal and indifference in highly secular Britain, where Catholics are a minority at 10 percent and endured centuries of bloody persecution until the early 1800s.

The pope's first meeting was with Queen Elizabeth II, both head of state and head of the Church of England, at The Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Benedict was warmly welcomed by the queen, who wore a blue-gray knee-length coat and matching hat and gloves, as tartan-wearing bagpipers marched and thousands of people watched under blustery, cloud-streaked blue skies. The pontiff himself donned a green tartan scarf as he rode through Edinburgh in the Popemobile.

Later, he enjoyed a very Scottish treat: a lunch of haggis — sheep heart, liver and lungs simmered in sheep stomach — at the home of Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien.

The queen told Benedict that his visit reminded all Britons of their common Christian heritage and said she hoped relations between the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church would be deepened as a result.

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Britain's advertising watchdog has banned an Italian ice cream ad featuring a pregnant nun, saying it causes offense to Catholics, the Associated Press reports.

The magazine ad for ice cream maker Antonio Federici showed the nun eating a tub of ice cream, with text that read: "Immaculately conceived ... Ice cream is our religion."

The Advertising Standards Authority said Wednesday it has received 10 complaints from magazine readers who said the ad was offensive to Christians. The agency said imagery used to illustrate immaculate conception was likely to be seen as mocking the beliefs of Roman Catholics.

The Italian company said the idea of conception represented the development of their ice cream and the ad aimed to gently satirize religion.

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The French Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a bill banning the burqa-style Islamic veil in public, but the leaders of both parliamentary houses said they had asked a special council to first ensure the measure passes constitutional muster amid concerns its tramples on religious freedoms, the Associated Press reports.

The Senate voted 246 to 1 Tuesday in favor of the bill, which has already passed in the lower chamber, the National Assembly. It will need President Nicolas Sarkozy's signature.

Legislative leaders said they wanted the Constitutional Council to examine it.

"This law was the object of long and complex debates," the Senate president, Gerard Larcher, and National Assembly head Bernard Accoyer said in a joint statement explaining their move. They said in a joint statement that they want to be certain there is "no uncertainty" about it conforming to the constitution.

The measure effects less than 2,000 women.

Many Muslims believe the legislation is one more blow to France's second religion, and risks raising the level of Islamophobia in a country where mosques, like synagogues, are sporadic targets of hate. However, the vast majority behind the measure say it will preserve the nation's singular values, including its secular foundation and a notion of fraternity that is contrary to those who hide their faces.

Continue reading "French Senate approves Muslim veil ban" »

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Pope Benedict XVI will break his own rule this weekend when he beatifies Cardinal John Henry Newman, the renowned 19th Century Anglican convert who greatly influenced the Roman Catholic Church, the Associated Press reports.

Newman remains a complicated figure within the Anglican church he abandoned, and the pope's glorification of him during a state visit to Britain could unleash new tensions between churches already divided over issues like the ordination of women and gay bishops, AP correspondent Nicole Winfield writes.

Benedict will move Newman a step closer to possible sainthood when he presides over his beatification on Sunday, the main reason for his four-day trip. It's the first time Benedict will celebrate a beatification; under his own rules popes don't beatify, only canonize.

For the German-born, by-the-book professor, such an exception to his own rule is significant. It's a calculated gesture that underscores Benedict's view that Newman is a crucial model for all Christians at a time when Christianity is on the wane in an increasingly secularized Europe.

"His personality and teachings could be a source of inspiration for ecumenism in our times from which all of us can draw," Benedict said on the eve of his trip. "It is my hope and prayer that more and more people will benefit from his gentle wisdom and be inspired by his example of integrity and holiness of life."

For many Anglicans, the sight of the pope traveling to Britain with the express aim of beatifying a figure who turned his back on their church will be a bitter one.

And Benedict has a history of causing offense while on foreign trips — notably outraging Muslims in a speech in Germany by appearing to suggest the prophet Muhammad spread a message of violence, or suggesting while traveling to Africa that condoms hindered the fight against AIDS.

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The French Senate debates Tuesday whether to ban the burqa-style veil, a move that affects only a tiny minority of the country's Muslim women but has significant symbolic repercussions, the Associated Press reports.

Muslims believe the latest legislation is one more blow to France's second religion, and risks raising the level of Islamophobia in a country where mosques, like synagogues, are sporadic targets of hate. Some women have vowed to wear a full-face veil despite the law.

The proposed law was passed overwhelmingly by the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, on July 13. The expected green light from the Senate would make it definitive once the president signs off on it — barring amendments and an eventual legal challenge.

The measure would outlaw face-covering veils in streets, including those worn by tourists from the Middle East and elsewhere. It is aimed at ensuring gender equality, women's dignity and security, as well as upholding France's secular values — and its way of life.

Kenza Drider, however, says she'll flirt with arrest to wear her veil as she pleases.

"It is a law that is unlawful," said Drider, a mother of four from Avignon, in southern France. "It is ... against individual liberty, freedom of religion, liberty of conscience, she said.

"I will continue to live my life as I always have with my full veil," she told Associated Press Television News.

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

It’s been a tough year to be an evangelical pastor with a small congregation. The two best-known examples are Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, and Terry Jones of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. The former is best known for protesting military funerals and running www.godhatesfags.com. The latter is known for a plan to burn copies of the Qur’an on Saturday to commemorate the 9/11 attacks.

Well down the list would be me. Like Westboro and Dove, New Hope is small and independent of a denomination. One difference would be that the only thing we burn is cigars when our guys get together to play poker.

There are plenty of other differences as well. But every time I turn on the news and hear about a small evangelical church that’s planning to burn copies of the Qur’an I realize that there just isn’t room for the reporters to describe it as “fringe,” or “cult-like” (see their “Discipleship Manual” at The Smoking Gun), or “nutty.” No, they have to call them something, so “small evangelical church” it is.

I’m getting a taste of what it’s like for many of my Muslim colleagues.

A couple of years back I asked a local Imam what he thought about the blasphemy laws in many majority-Muslim countries that prescribe the death penalty for those converting from Islam to another religion. He told me he thought it was outrageous. I referenced the passages in the Qur’an used to justify the practice, and asked why other imams would endorse it on that basis. “Because they’re idiots,” he said.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: I'm with stupid" »

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An anti-Islamic preacher backed off and then threatened to reconsider burning the Quran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, angrily accusing a Muslim leader of lying to him Thursday with a promise to move an Islamic center and mosque away from New York's ground zero, the Associated Press reports. The imam planning the center denied there was ever such a deal.

The Rev. Terry Jones generated an international firestorm with his plan to burn the Quran on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and he has been under intense pressure to give it up. President Barack Obama urged him to listen to "those better angels" and give up his "stunt," saying it would endanger U.S. troops and give Islamic terrorists a recruiting tool. Defense Secretary Robert Gates took the extraordinary step of calling Jones personally.

Standing outside his 50-member Pentecostal church, the Dove Outreach Center, alongside Imam Muhammad Musri, the president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, Jones said he relented when Musri assured him that the New York mosque will be moved.

Musri, however, said after the news conference that the agreement was only for him and Jones to travel to New York and meet Saturday with the imam overseeing plans to build a mosque near ground zero.

Hours later, Jones said Musri "clearly, clearly lied to us."

"Given what we are now hearing, we are forced to rethink our decision," Jones said. "So as of right now, we are not canceling the event, but we are suspending it."

Jones did not say whether the Quran burning could still be held Saturday, but he said he expected Musri to keep his word and expected "the imam in New York to back up one of his own men."

Continue reading "Preacher cancels Quran burning, then reconsiders" »

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Hundreds of angry Afghans burned a U.S. flag and chanted "Death to the Christians" on Thursday to protest plans by a small American church to torch copies of the Muslim holy book on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the Associated Press reports.

Religious and political leaders across the Muslim world, as well as several U.S. officials, have asked the church to call off the plan, warning it would lead to violence against Americans. Iraq, worried that it will unleash a backlash against all Christians, has beefed up security near churches.

The Rev. Terry Jones, of the Dove Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, has vowed to go ahead with the bonfire on Saturday, even though he has been denied the required permit.

Local officials in Mahmud Raqi, the capital of Afghanistan's Kapisa province, estimated that up to 4,000 people took part in Thursday's demonstration. But NATO spokesman James Judge said the protesters numbered between 500 to 700.

"The Afghan national police prevented the protest from overwhelming an Afghan military outpost," and dispersed the demonstration, he told The Associated Press.

A cleric in Afghanistan's largely peaceful Balkh province also warned Thursday that, if the burning goes ahead, a protest will be held in the provincial capital Mazar-i-Sharif next Monday. Protesters could hurl stones at NATO-led troops stationed in the city — one of the country's main centers of the Islamic teaching.

In the central Pakistani city of Multan, about 200 people marched and burned a U.S. flag.

"If Quran is burned it would be beginning of destruction of America," read one English-language banner held up by the protesters, who chanted "Down with America!"

Continue reading "Afghans burn U.S. flag to protest Quran burning" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

President Barack Obama is exhorting a Florida minister to "listen to those better angels" and call off his plan to engage in a Quran-burning protest this weekend, the Associated Press reports.

Obama told ABC's "Good Morning America" in an interview aired Thursday that he hopes the Rev. Terry Jones of Florida listens to the pleas of people who have asked him to call off the plan. The president called it a "stunt."

"If he's listening, I hope he understands that what he's proposing to do is completely contrary to our values as Americans," Obama said. "That this country has been built on the notion of freedom and religious tolerance."

"And as a very practical matter, I just want him to understand that this stunt that he is talking about pulling could greatly endanger our young men and women who are in uniform," the president added.

Said Obama: "Look, this is a recruitment bonanza for Al Qaida. You could have serious violence in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan." The president also said Jones' plan, if carried out, could serve as an incentive for terrorist-minded individuals "to blow themselves up" to kill others.

"I hope he listens to those better angels and understands that this is a destructive act that he's engaging in," the president said of Jones.

Continue reading "Obama urges pastor to drop Quran-burning plan" »

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Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski is calling plans by a Florida pastor to burn copies of the Muslim holy book on Saturday "disgraceful and un-American."

“The anniversary of the devastating terrorist attacks of 9/11 should not be marked with an act of hatred," the Maryland Democrat said in a statement. "Book burning is the action of fanatics and fascists. The Quran should be treated with the same respect given to the Bible and the Torah."

Terry Jones, pastor of the nondenominational Dove Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., says the church will proceed with "International Burn-a-Quran Day" despite condemnations by the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the White House.

Gen. David Petraeus warned in an e-mail to The Associated Press that "images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence."

Petraeus spoke with Afghan President Hamid Karzai about the matter Wednesday, the AP reports.

"They both agreed that burning of a Quran would undermine our effort in Afghanistan, jeopardize the safety of coalition troopers and civilians," spokesman Col. Erik Gunhus said, and would "create problems for our Afghan partners ... as it likely would be Afghan police and soldiers who would have to deal with any large demonstrations."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged Jones to cancel the event, the AP reports.

Continue reading "Mikulski: Burning Quran 'disgraceful,' 'un-American'" »

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A Muslim stonemason who spent nearly four decades helping to restore a Roman Catholic cathedral in France has been immortalized as a winged gargoyle peering out from its facade — with the inscription "God is great" written in French and Arabic.

It was conceived as a symbol of inter-religious friendship that reflects the city of Lyon's links to its large Muslim population, the Associated Press reports. But a widely publicized outcry from a small extreme-right group has forced the Archdiocese of Lyon into damage control.

"This has nothing to do with religion. It's a sculptor who wants to pay homage to a construction site chief," said the Rev. Michel Cacaud, rector of the cathedral. "That's all."

In France, where Islam is the country's second religion, the government has worked to integrate Muslims into French culture, while at the same time confronting cases of Islamophobia, from the desecration of Muslim graves to attacks on mosques.

Ahmed Benzizine, who was born in Algeria, a former French colony, sees the gargoyle in his image as "a message of peace and tolerance."

"When I started to work in churches ... exactly 37 years ago, it was considered a sin that a Muslim enter a place of worship other than a mosque," he said.

He has worked off and on since 1973 at St. Jean Cathedral, which dominates the old city of Lyon and has been honored as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Benzizine is tickled to see his likeness on the facade of the cathedral, which dates to the 12th to 14th centuries and combines both Gothic and Roman architecture.

"It looks like me except for the ears," the 59-year-old told The Associated Press. "They're pointed like the devil. But the sculptor told me that angels have pointed ears, too."

Continue reading "Catholic church honors Muslim worker" »

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The leader of a small Florida church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy said Wednesday he was determined to go through with his plan to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, despite pressure from the White House, religious leaders and others to call it off, the Associated Press reports.

"We are still determined to do it, yes," the Rev. Terry Jones told the CBS Early Show.

Jones says he has received more than 100 death threats and has started wearing a .40-caliber pistol strapped to his hip since announcing his plan to burn the book Muslims consider the word of God and insist be treated with the utmost respect. The 58-year-old minister proclaimed in July that he would stage "International Burn-a-Quran Day."

Supporters have been mailing copies of the holy text to his Gainesville church of about 50 followers to be incinerated in a bonfire on Saturday to mark the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Kabul, took the rare step of a military leader taking a position on a domestic matter when he warned in an e-mail to The Associated Press that "images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence."

Petraeus spoke Wednesday with Afghan President Karzai about the matter, according to a military spokesman Col. Erik Gunhus. "They both agreed that burning of a Quran would undermine our effort in Afghanistan, jeopardize the safety of coalition troopers and civilians," Gunhus said, and would "create problems for our Afghan partners ... as it likely would be Afghan police and soldiers who would have to deal with any large demonstrations."

Jones responded that he is also concerned but is "wondering, 'When do we stop?'" He refused to cancel the protest at his Dove World Outreach Center but said he was still praying about it.

Continue reading "Pastor 'determined' to burn Quran" »

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A Christian minister said Tuesday that he will go ahead with plans to burn copies of the Quran to protest the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks despite warnings from the top U.S. general in Afghanistan and the White House that doing so would endanger U.S. troops, the Associated Press reports.

Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center said he understands the government's concerns, but plans to go forward with the burning this Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the attacks.

He left the door open to change his mind, however, saying that he is still praying about his decision.

Gen. David Petraeus warned Tuesday in an e-mail to The Associated Press that "images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence."

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley echoed that later in the day, calling the plan to burn copies of the Quran "un-American" and saying it does not represent the views of most people in the U.S.

"While it may well be within someone's rights to take this action, we hope cooler heads will prevail," Crowley said. He said burning copies of the Quran would be "inconsistent with the values of religious tolerance and religious freedom," and potentially puts the lives of U.S. soldiers and diplomats at risk.

Jones told the AP in a phone interview that he is also concerned but wonders how many times the U.S. can back down.

Continue reading "Pastor plans to burn Quran despite military warning" »

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The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warned Tuesday an American church's threat to burn copies of the Muslim holy book could endanger U.S. troops in the country and Americans worldwide, the Associated Press reports.

The comments from Gen. David Petraeus followed a protest Monday by hundreds of Afghans over the plans by Gainesville, Florida-based Dove World Outreach Center — a small, evangelical Christian church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy — to burn copies of the Quran on church grounds to mark the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States that provoked the Afghan war.

"Images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence," Petraeus said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Muslims consider the Quran to be the word of God and insist it be treated with the utmost respect, along with any printed material containing its verses or the name of Allah or the Prophet Muhammad. Any intentional damage or show of disrespect to the Quran is deeply offensive.

In 2005, 15 people died and scores were wounded in riots in Afghanistan sparked by a story in Newsweek magazine alleging interrogators at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay placed copies of the Quran in washrooms and flushed one down the toilet to get inmates to talk. Newsweek later retracted the story.

Continue reading "Petraeus: Burning Quran could endanger troops" »

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The lawyer for an Iranian woman sentenced to be stoned on an adultery conviction said Monday that he and her children are worried the delayed execution could be carried out soon with the end of a moratorium on death sentences for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Associated Press reports.

In an unusual turn in the case, the lawyer also confirmed that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was lashed 99 times last week in a separate punishment meted out because a British newspaper ran a picture of an unveiled woman mistakenly identified as her. Under Iran's clerical rule, women must cover their hair in public. The newspaper later apologized for the error.

With the end of Ramadan this week, the mother of two could be executed "any moment," said her lawyer, Javid Houtan Kian.

The sentence was put on hold in July after an international outcry over the brutality of the punishment, and it is now being reviewed by Iran's supreme court.

Ashtiani was convicted in 2006 of having an "illicit relationship" with two men after the murder of her husband the year before and was sentenced at that time to 99 lashes. Later that year, she was also convicted of adultery and sentenced to be stoned, even though she retracted a confession that she says was made under duress.

"The possibility of stoning still exists, any moment," Kian told The Associated Press. "Her stoning sentence was only delayed; it has not been lifted yet."

Continue reading "Lawyer: Iranian woman could be stoned soon" »

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The University of California, Irvine has upheld its decision to suspend a campus Muslim group after some of its members disrupted a speech by the Israeli ambassador at a campus event, the Associated Press reports.

However, the university said last week it would lift the suspension of the Muslim Student Union on Dec. 31 instead of enforcing it for a full year.

In addition, the group will be on probation for two years instead of one, and members must complete 100 hours of community service.

Eleven students were arrested in February for disrupting Michael Oren's speech.

Hadeer Soliman, the group's interim vice president, says the punishment will affect hundreds of Muslims who regularly attend prayer meetings and socialize together.

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The EU's trade chief apologized Friday for blaming Jews and the "Jewish lobby" in Washington for blocking Mideast peace as the embarrassed EU head office quickly distanced itself from his comments, the Associated Press reports.

Karel De Gucht, 56, said he did not mean to stigmatize Jewish people and stressed in a statement that "anti-Semitism has no place in today's world." The remarks in a Thursday radio interview came as the U.S. formally convened the first direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in nearly two years.

The European Jewish Congress, an umbrella group, had demanded a retraction of De Gucht's remarks in which he maintained that Israel frustrates U.S.-led peace efforts and warned not to "underestimate the Jewish lobby on Capitol Hill."

"That is the best organized lobby that exists there," the former Belgian foreign minister said in the interview with the Dutch-speaking VRT radio network.

"Don't underestimate the opinion ... of the average Jew outside of Israel," he said. "There is, indeed, a belief, I can hardly describe it differently, among most Jews that they are right. So it is not easy to have a rational discussion with a moderate Jew about what is happening in the Middle East. It is a very emotional issue."

Jewish groups warned that De Gucht's comments were part of a growing wave of anti-Semitism in Europe. Germany's central bank said Thursday it will ask a board member to step down for stereotyping Muslims and Jews. The official, Thilo Sarrazin said in a book published this week that Muslim immigrants in Europe cannot or will not integrate. He also has cited studies he says prove that "all Jews share a certain gene" — ideas he stressed in recent interviews.

Continue reading "EU official apologizes for comment on 'Jewish lobby'" »

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Note to big companies hoping to tap into France's lucrative but long-neglected Muslim consumer market: Pitfalls may await, and not only in the form of complaints from the far-right.

As of this week, the Associated Press reports, 22 outlets of popular French fast food chain Quick are serving burgers it says respect Islamic dietary law. And while many Muslims are delighted, the powerful main Paris Mosque complained Thursday that Quick's criteria aren't all-encompassing enough, and that the operation is meaningless.

Quick's meat is certified as halal, but Cheikh Al Sid Cheikh, assistant to the rector of the Paris Mosque, said the burger chain should have had the other ingredients checked as well, from its mustard to buns to fries.

"The rest must be validated too, or else there's no point," he told The Associated Press. Quick responded that it has no intention of making any of its restaurants halal through-and-through — beer is still served there, for example, said spokeswoman Valerie Raynal.

Such cultural sensitivities are new territory for many French companies. Until recently in France, a country obsessed with secularism, companies were hesitant to reach out to France's Muslim population, estimated to be 5 million, the largest in Europe.

Continue reading "Mosque objects to burger chain's Muslim outreach" »

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The Mormon church is in talks with the People's Republic of China to improve relations for church members living in mainland China, the Associated Press reports.

The discussions are aimed at ensuring that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says are practicing their faith within the boundaries of Chinese law, the church said. The talks were initiated by a senior Chinese government official, who was not identified by name in the statement.

Dallin H. Oaks, a member of the church's senior leadership circle, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and Elder Donald L. Hallstrom, who both oversee church operations in Asia attended meetings in Beijing in February and May.

A third meeting was held Aug. 24 in Salt Lake City between a Chinese official and the 13 million-member faith's First Presidency.

"No U.S. government official or diplomat has been involved in any way in these discussions," said Mike Otterson, who runs the church's public affairs department. "This is purely between the leadership in Salt Lake City and the leadership in Beijing."

None of the discussions have addressed the possibility of church missionaries proselytizing in China, Otterson said.

"That issue is not even under consideration," Otterson said.

Continue reading "Mormon church, China in talks" »

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Shaukat Malik is a Muslim-American in Maryland. A native of Pakistan, he arrived in the United States in 1980.

For a moderate Muslim who has lived continuously in the West for more than thirty-eight years, the protests against the interfaith center proposed for Lower Manhattan is a wakeup call.

It highlights a deep distrust of Muslims and of our moderate belief system. In my version of Islam, I share my God and prophets with the Christians and the Jews, and hold them in equal reverence. I firmly believe that our religion is determined at birth by God and we must respect all religions. The only role of religion in my life is to give me hope and help me become a good citizen.

I do not need to grow a beard but those that do for symbolism are exercising their personal freedom -- and, perhaps without realizing it, are helping the environment by not wasting the water and energy consumed in the shaving process. I do not need any intermediary to pray for me to God, and strongly believe in the absolute separation of church and state.

Save for a tiny minority, Muslims do not subscribe to the orthodox brand of Islam that mistakenly assumes that Muslims are superior to all others and all humanity must be converted to Islam. If God wants us all to be Muslims, he surely has the power to make us so.

As human beings, we have every right to be very angry with the 19 madmen who killed thousands of innocent civilians on Sept. 11, 2001.

Continue reading "Guest post: A Muslim perspective on the mosque" »

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Britons planning to attend open-air services by Pope Benedict XVI next month have been told it's OK to bring a picnic — but leave the wine at home, the Associated Press reports.

Organizers of the pontiff's visit released a detailed list Monday of what is allowed and barred from two large-scale gatherings.

Sunscreen, banners, flags, cushions and folding chairs are all permitted, and people are encouraged to bring a "pilgrim picnic."

But barbecues, candles, musical instruments, pets and alcohol are banned because they "could pose a threat to yourself or others."

Some 80,000 people are expected to attend a Sept. 18 prayer meeting in London's Hyde Park, and 65,000 a Mass in Birmingham's Cofton Park the next day.

The four-day trip is the first papal visit to Britain since 1982.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

The furor over the planned mosque and Islamic center near ground zero has put Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf in a curious position: At the same time he is being vilified in the U.S. for spearheading the project, he is traveling the Mideast on a State Department mission as a symbol of American religious freedom.

Some of the imam's American critics said they fear he is using the taxpayer-funded trip to raise money and rally support in the Muslim world for the mosque, the Associated Press reports.

"I think there is no place for this," said the Rev. Franklin Graham, who is the son of evangelist Billy Graham and opposes the Islamic center and mosque. "Can you imagine if the State Department paid to send me on a trip anywhere? The separation of church and state — the critics would have been howling."

At his first event Friday in the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain, Rauf refused to discuss the uproar over plans for the community center two blocks from the World Trade Center site. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley has said Rauf understands that he cannot solicit funds for the project on his 15-day tour.

The $100 million, 13-story project is modeled after the YMCA and Jewish Community Center. Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, a co-leader of the project, have a long record of interfaith outreach and insist the center will promote moderate Islam.

Continue reading "Imam's goodwill tour comes amid mosque furor" »

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The imam leading plans for an Islamic center near the Manhattan site of the Sept. 11 attacks said Friday he hopes to draw attention during his trip in the Middle East to the common challenges to battle radical religious beliefs, the Associated Press reports.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is on the first leg of a 15-day Mideast tour funded by the U.S. State Department, refused to discuss the political firestorm over the plans for an Islamic cultural center about two blocks from the World Trade Center towers. Foes of the project say it is insensitive and disrespectful to the victims of 9/11 and their families. The debate has become politicized ahead of November's midterm congressional elections.

Instead, Rauf preferred to focus on shared concerns. Speaking after leading Friday prayers at a neighborhood mosque outside Bahrain's capital Manama, he said radical religious views pose a security threat in both the West and the Muslim world.

"This issue of extremism is something that has been a national security issue — not only for the United States but also for many countries and nations in the Muslim world," Rauf said. "This is why this particular trip has a great importance because all countries in the Muslim world — as well as the Western world — are facing this ... major security challenge."

The imam also said he has been working on a way to "Americanize Islam." While he did not elaborate on what an American version of Islam might look like, he did note that different interpretations of the faith have emerged over the religion's nearly 1,400-year existence.

"The same principles and rituals were everywhere, but what happened in different regions was there were different interpretations," he said. "So we recognize that our heritage allows for re-expressing the internal principles of our religion in different cultural times and places."

Continue reading "N.Y. mosque imam: Extremism is global threat" »

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It's a plain wooden cross almost austere in its simplicity.

But as Associated Press writer Vanessa Gera reports from Warsaw, it is stirring passions in heavily Roman Catholic Poland that expose bitter divisions which make it seem like two separate nations sharing the same land and language.

The pale wood cross about four meters (13 feet) high was erected in front of the presidential palace by Boy and Girl Scouts days after the April plane crash in Russia that killed President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and 94 others.

It quickly became a spot for mourners to light candles, place flowers and pray.

Now, with a new president installed and the country returning to normal, the question of whether the cross should stay or go has set off wider disputes that underscore the deep divisions between traditional and modern Poles, conservatives and liberals, and even rich and poor.

"The cross is a catalyst that has mobilized people who are fed up with the clericalization of Polish public life," said Jacek Kucharczyk, president of the Institute of Public Affairs, a Warsaw think tank.

On one side are deeply nationalistic and religious supporters of the late president who want the cross to stay until a fitting memorial is built to the victims, among whom were top military brass and church leaders. Some of them cling to a conspiracy theory suggesting that Kaczynski's domestic political rivals and Russians conspired to kill him.

On the other is an increasingly self-confident secular society that dismisses the conspiracy theory as lunacy and believes the religious symbol does not belong in front of such an important public building. This group argues that despite the country's Catholic influence, the constitution guarantees a separation of church and state, and that the cross should move to a church.

Continue reading "Battle over cross reveals cultural divide in Poland" »

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American Muslim leaders who recently returned from visiting Dauchau and Auschwitz have released a statement condemning Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, the Associated Press reports.

The trip earlier this month was led by Rabbi Jack Bemporad of the Center for Interreligious Understanding in New Jersey, and co-sponsored by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation of Germany.

The Muslim leaders said that denying or justifying the Holocaust violates Islamic ethics.

"We condemn anti-Semitism in any form," the leaders wrote. "No creation of Almighty God should face discrimination based on his or her faith or religious conviction."

The leaders pledged to fight prejudice against Jews, Muslims and all people based on their religion, race or ethnicity.

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Mexico City's leftist mayor said Tuesday he will take legal action if a Roman Catholic cardinal doesn't apologize for suggesting he bribed the Supreme Court to uphold a city law allowing adoptions by same-sex couples, the Associated Press reports.

Mayor Marcelo Ebrard says that if Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez does not apologize by midnight, he is going to file a slander complaint.

The church opposes the Mexico City law, but the Supreme Court has ruled it constitutional.

Over the weekend, the cardinal suggested the justices may have been paid to uphold the law, using a slang word for corruption that refers to giving feed to livestock.

The court has denied and condemned the accusation.

In a statement, the Mexican Council of Bishops expressed its "solidarity and regards" for Sandoval Iniguez.

Continue reading "Mayor threatens suit if cardinal doesn't apologize" »