Yes, this was listed without comment as part of a regular feature at the news site Baptists Today:
Vatican condemns Hallowe'en as anti-Christian
That headline and story compose one, long error. The fact that a story is in L'Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, does not make the contents of the story Vatican policy. And as tmatt writes at GetReligion
Read the story and see if you can find any material that is actually from the Vatican.
None.
Southern Baptist Convention heavyweights should think of youngsters who would be spared by a database of Baptist clerical sexual predators, like the one the SBC rejected in 2008. Not, events in Alabama suggest, hypothetical youngsters. Former pastor Ralph Lee Aaron's Victory Baptist Church transgression would have been recorded, had a well-managed database existed at that time. Rather than left to late detection by a mother, whose alertness led to Aaron's arrest:
The investigation began last Tuesday after a mother, who had heard rumors of a previous incident involving Aaron, had a “straightforward” conversation with her son. That incident stemmed from a 2005 complaint that occurred while Aaron was serving at Andalusia’s Victory Baptist Church. No charges were filed in the 2005 complaint, which was investigated by the Covington County District Attorney’s office and the Department of Human Resources.
As a result of that conversation, the mother determined her son may have had inappropriate contact with Aaron, and she elected to contact authorities.
“Surprisingly, (the victim) was open and honest, and they discussed it at length before contacting law enforcement,” [lead sheriff's investigator Wesley] Snodgrass said. “It was quickly identified as a substantial case.”
Aaron was arrested Oct. 21 and is being held on $24.2 million bond for more than 150 sex crimes involving child pornography and the abuse of eight- to 12-year-old victims. District Attorney Greg Gambril said the Covington County Sheriff’s Department has put together a “very strong case” and that the state will be seeking multiple life sentences.
You can see, then, that many clerical predators are not found in existing criminal sex-offender registries. Because many are never convicted of a crime. Yet they would be recorded in a well-managed denominational database of credibly-accused clergy, like the one the SBC rejected in June of 2008.
Christa Brown explores the issue in detail.
Surely Catholic author David Gibson knows that reference to a "trick" in a discussion somehow regarding sex will for a great many readers bring extraordinarily secular images powerfully to mind.
Even so, here is the headline for his comment on the Vatican's latest proclamation regarding marriage, sex & Tiber-swimming Anglican priests:
Celibacy and Anglican orders: Trick? Or Treat?
Leers, like batteries, not included.
Digital Open was for any, 17 or younger. There are eight grand prize winners, and Harry Lee, below, is uplifting.
Join the playfully musical for a moment of musical amusement whose breathless lyrics recall grandparental attempts to be frightening. Brewed by Irene Rible. [H/T to BoingBoing] & yes, our pumpkin is pro-life tonight.
Another archdiocese driven to solitary action. Archbishop Favalora of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami has banned Legionaries of Christ (LC) and Regnum Christi (RC). They "are prohibited from functioning in the Archdiocese of Miami."
Thomas Peters reports:
Sources close to the situation tell me that this decision took place on Wednesday of this week, and that it was prompted largely by the letters of parents concerned that their children were being approached by members of Regnum Christi without parental consent and knowledge. These episodes, it was claimed, had mostly taken place in an affluent Archdiocese of Miami parish and school.
The notice on the Archdiocese of Miami Web site said:
Disclaimer
The Legionaries of Christ are prohibited from functioning in the Archdiocese of Miami. Furthermore, Regnum Christi - a group of lay Catholics related to the Legionaries of Christ - is not and has never been approved by Archbishop Favalora to work in any parish, school or other Archdiocesan entity.
Unauthorized attempts to recruit young people are a continuation of the cult-like behavior which is the hallmark of LC/DC. Related behaviors have led one U.S. archdiocese after another to ban or restrict LC and/or DC.
John Allen of the National Catholic Review and Peters of American Papist together suggest that nine of the U.S. 32 Roman Catholic archdioceses have either banned or restricted LC and/or RC.
They are:
Provinces and dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States
LC is the subject of an investigation, called an “apostolic visitation,” is being conducted by Basque Bishop Ricardo Blazquez in Spain and by Archbishop of Denver Charles Chaput in the United States. The order was founded by Marcial Maciel, who fathered several children, and it is clear that Legion of Christ superiors knew about the children at least 15 years ago. He also abused young seminarians over whom he had authority.
Vatican intervention was belated and reluctant although certainly appropriate. It is, however, so slow to action that archbishops are being driven, one-by-one, to individual measures. None of which will substitute, of course, for an overarching solution, like dissolution or refounding of LC/RC.
[H/T:American Papist]
When Christian groups argue — and some seen to thrive on the process — advantage goes to the side which claims the "biblical" high ground. If they can hold it.
Take for example this statement by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, whose president, Paige Patterson, is a well-known veteran of the Southern Baptist controversy:
While the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 is the only confessional document at Southwestern, the seminary also affirms the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy and the Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. These statements clarify the seminary’s general posture on the the subjects of inerrancy and gender roles.
Several questions immediately come to mind.
If the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, is the school's "only" confessional statement, why the other two statements?
The school says the other statements "clarify the seminary's general posture" on inerrancy and gender roles.
The general posture?
What does that mean?
And why does it need clarifying?
If the other two statements are needed to "clarify" the school's stance, then why not add them as confessional statements?
Or else, why isn't the only confessional statement enough?
Yet the confessional statement is not enough, at least not enough for Southwestern seminary.
Turns out, it isn't enough for Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina either.
Tony Cartledge reported that Southeastern is making even the ministers who supervise students in practical ministry efforts sign all three statements, along with the school's Abstract of Principles.
Cartledge is correct to say that seminaries have the right to draw their own lines of participation "as narrowly and fearfully as they want to." But as he points out, such moves "exclude a number of capable, qualified, experienced ministers from the program, to the great detriment of their students."
Cartledge says the Danvers statement "was adopted in 1987 by the 'Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood,' which consists largely of people with close connections to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary." The document, he said, "attempts a response to the perceived danger of 'feminist egalitarianism' by affirming a belief that husbands should be the final authority in their homes (albeit humbly), and that wives should submit to their husbands."
A closer look at the statement raises even more questions.
For example, item number seven of the statement's affirmations includes the phrase, "In all of life Christ is the supreme authority and guide for men and women ... ." Yet, in all the biblical texts given in support all 10 items, not a one is from the gospels, the section of the Bible where the life of Christ and his teachings are highlighted.
The eighth item of the statement insists that in "both men and women a heartfelt sense of call to ministry should never be used to set aside Biblical criteria for particular ministries." Instead, the statement says, "Biblical teaching should remain the authority for testing our subjective discernment of God's will."
And in this instance, the schools get to decide the criteria used to override those calls, and it is the seminarys' teaching that becomes authoritative.
The seminaries thereby complete construction of a "biblical" facade around their interpretation of particular passages.
Counterfactual and theologically off the map, CBN's story claiming "most" Halloween candy was bewitched in the worst way has, without benefit of a cloud of smoke, disappeared.
Thanks to Tommy Christopher at MediaIte, a Southern Baptist minister laid out the facts. Dr.Thomas Howe, Dean of Apologetics and Professor of Biblical Studies at the Southern Evangelical Seminary told Christopher that with regard to “time-release curses,” demon orgies, demonic candy and the like:
“None of (this is) considered main stream Christian beliefs. Beliefs in curses is occultic, not Christian. I am not aware of any evidence supporting any of these claims about Halloween, neither do I subscribe to the notion of a demonic trinity. This is not found anywhere in the Bible, and it is not a historic Christian doctrine.”
Amen.
Response is to be expected, although it isn't a scandal that the New York Times refused to run Archbishop of New York Timothy M. Dolan's allegations of anti-Catholicism on their own pages.
He oversimplifies complex issues, minimizing and emphasizing as conveniently as a Southern Baptist Convention executive explaining failure to create the church machinery to effectively protect Baptist parishioners against clerical sexual abuse.
No matter. Here it is.
While Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights threw rhetoric bombs at "radical secularists" in a Washington Post comment, the Vatican aspired to a higher standard of online civility.
Italian Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, offering the example of Pope Benedict XVI's argument that "Charity needs truth and truth needs charity," said:
Anyone speaking publicly as a Catholic has to have those ethical values that are part of a serious, honest form of communication.
Although the focus of the Oct. 26-29 Vatican City gathering of cardinals, bishops and Catholic media professionals was the behavior of Catholics toward one another, discussion of the harsh overarching tenor of recent online communication was inevitable. In particular, Basilian Father Thomas Rosica, the head of Canada's Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation, spoke of the "radicalization of rhetoric" on the Web. He observed that as a result of pervasively negative messages from so many online who describe themselves as Catholic, "Christians are known as the people who are against everything."
Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony said bishops should be models for the Catholic faithful on how to hold a civil discussion, online or offline. Indeed:
You don't have dialogue when people anonymously throw out their hatreds, their prejudices, their biases and always -- in every case -- end up attacking people.
Back at the Washington Post, John Gehring of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good wrote in response to Donohue's railing:
We live in an age where the shrillest voices often drown out sober debate and thoughtful insights. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh watch their ratings soar with every outrageous remark. Bill Donohue gets invited on TV because he bellows and bloviates with the best of them. While some enjoy the antics, most of us are tired of the noise machine. Faith and reason are not enemies, but together can help illuminate our path through the dark forests of fear, ignorance and injustice. Sometimes we just need to turn down the volume and tune out the shouters to find our way.
No doubt someone will find a way to roll all of this into the alleged civility conspiracy to silence the loudest conservative radio and television voices. When it is clearly a bid for a more civil, productive dialog.
German artist Albrecht Durer's engraving "Melancholia" (1514)"
About Hictory Baptist pastor David Treadway's suicide, Greg Warner writes for Religion News Service:
[A professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Matthew] Stanford, who studies how the Christian community deals with mental illness, said depression in Christian culture carries "a double stigmatization."
Society still places a stigma on mental illness, but Christians make it worse, he said, by "over-spiritualizing" depression and other disorders — dismissing them as a lack of faith or a sign of weakness.
Polite Southern culture adds its own taboo against "talking about something as personal as your mental health," noted Scoggin.
A federation of 22 regional church bodies, all of which practice the ordination of women and some of which bless same-sex marriages, the Evangelical Church of Germany (EKD) elected Bishop Margot Kaessmann, 51, its first female head Wednesday during a meeting of the Protestant body’s council in Ulm.
Other women who head denominations include Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church in the United States, National Bishop Susan Johnson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada and General Minister and President Sharon E. Watkins of the Christians (Disciples of Christ) in the United States.
Kaessmann, a divorcee and the Lutheran bishop of Hanover, commented after the vote that "It is a sign that we are saying: For biblical and theological reasons, it is possible for women as well as men to assume any office in the Protestant Church."
"The election sends a signal to the Church worldwide that God calls us to leadership without consideration of gender, color or descent." Rev. Ishmael Noko, [Lutheran World Federation] LWF general-secretary told the Ecumenical News International news agency at the synod in Ulm.
Viciously sly government pretenses at freeom of religion that favor some while oppressing don't look like the hate crime legislation President Barack Obama signed this week. They tend to be bureaucratic and inane, like the Uzbek approach Tony Cartledge described:
The Uzbek constitution contains provisions guaranteeing religious freedom and separation of church and state, but a separate law restricts religious expression to groups that are registered with the government. In a thinly veiled Catch 22, groups not in favor with the government are not allowed to register, rendering their activities "illegal" despite the official stance of religious freedom. Reportedly, no Baptist groups have been permitted to register since 1999.
Using those dicta, Uzbekistan this week convicted three Baptists of running a kid's camp, the way Baptists do. More specifically, they were found guilty of tax evasion (their church activity was denied the aforementioned registration) and involving children in religious activities without their parents' permission (although parents know the camp is operated by Baptists), fined and barred from doing what they do (administrative and financial activity) for three years.
Banal in implementation and unlike this country's endless struggle over how best to prevent government from sponsoring or appearing to sponsor religious activities, that's oppression.
Birther queen Orly Taitz encouraged witness to lie, Central District of California Judge David O. Carter said in his ruling dismissing her case.
David Weigel quoted from the ruling:The Court has received several sworn affidavits that Taitz asked potential witnesses that she planned to call before this Court to perjure themselves. This Court is deeply concerned that Taitz may have suborned perjury through witnesses she intended to bring before this Court. While the Court seeks to ensure that all interested parties have had the opportunity to be heard, the Court cannot condone the conduct of Plaintiffs’ counsel in her efforts to influence this Court.
Not unexpectedly, birthers did not accept the verdict or related criticism well.
Petulant Taitz followers planned to discipline albeit not excommunicate Bill O'Reilly after he commented on Tuesday that he thinks the "birther" lawsuits are "crazy." They made plans to protest outside Fox news headquarters in New York on Veterans' Day.
So it is with those who bring the birther faithful unwelcome messages, as Judge Carter did in dismissing Taitz's suit. Conspiracies, you see.
As night follows day, then, Taitz discovered that the good judge was being manipulated by a "new clerk, fresh out of Perkins Coie, law firm, that represented Obama, in some 100 cases."Eternal fragile, petulant hypervigilance is the price of liberty. Remember: "Watch the skies."
Victims of clerical child abuse in church and state-run schools in Northern Ireland have called for an investigation of the harm done them like the Ryan report on abuse in the Republic of Ireland.
Dan Keenan of the Irish Times wrote today:
[Solicitor Joe} Rice [who represents “a significant number” of abuse survivors], in his letter to First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, referred to those who suffered all forms of abuse and neglect in Northern Ireland since 1947. “It is apparent that the level of abuse was widespread and endemic, and moreover that all the institutions involved had a duty of care to those children placed in their trust, and responsibility under the different statutory frameworks in the post-war period,” he wrote.
BBC explained:
The Ryan Report detailed widespread sexual, physical and emotional abuse in Catholic-run institutions.
It was commissioned in 2000 following a series of scandals involving Catholic priests in both Northern Ireland and the Republic.
The VaticanCrimes blog writes:
This is something that is beginning to gather momentum. We have been instructed by clients in Northern Ireland who have been victims of abuse, both in state institutions and in care homes similar to those in the Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (The Ryan Report) in the Republic of Ireland. We have noticed, over the past few months, in our three offices, people coming in with complaints in relation to physical abuse, neglect and sex abuse in various institutes. These complaints of abuse have not been properly investigated by the authorities in Northern Ireland. All the institutions would have been under the inspectorate of the old Stormont government at the time.
Former Alabama Southern Baptist pastor Ralph L. Aaron was as of this writing still listed as a Covington Theological Seminary extension dean offering instruction at First Baptist Church in Opp, Ala.
Aaron was arrested Oct. 21 and is being held on $24.2 million bond for some 150 sex crimes involving child pornography and the abuse of eight- to 12-year-old victims. He reportedly has a degree from Covingtion and wrote a print-on-demand book, reviewed by The Alabama Baptist, based on his thesis.
Aaron was reportedly fired upon arrest by non-denominatinal Grace Christian Fellowship in Andalusia, Ala., where he had been pastor for more than three years. Prior to that he was pastor at Victory Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist Church, also in Andalusia.
District Attorney Greg Gambril said the Covington County Sheriff's Department has put together a "very strong case" and that the state will be seeking multiple life sentences.
According to the Andalusa Star News
The investigation began last Tuesday after a mother, who had heard rumors of a previous incident involving Aaron, had a “straightforward” conversation with her son. That incident stemmed from a 2005 complaint that occurred while Aaron was serving at Andalusia’s Victory Baptist Church. No charges were filed in the 2005 complaint, which was investigated by the Covington County District Attorney’s office and the Department of Human Resources.
As a result of that conversation, the mother determined her son may have had inappropriate contact with Aaron, and she elected to contact authorities.
“Surprisingly, (the victim) was open and honest, and they discussed it at length before contacting law enforcement,” [lead sheriff's investigator Wesley] Snodgrass said. “It was quickly identified as a substantial case.”
Not substantial enough for the Alabama Baptist online to report it, however. Thus far. The independent Associated Baptist Press has a thorough account.
Covington Theological Seminary is controversial for "accreditation through an agency that is not recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and is an outgrowth of a company that was once charged with fraud."
Covingtion attracted attention the first time Johnny Hunt was elected Southern Baptist Convention president because it was the source of one of the two honorary Phds. he claimed.
Although he has earned no academic Phd., he accepted being called and, as the "Pastor's Office" page on his church Web site attests, still terms himself "Dr. Johnny Hunt." His claim of the title is based on one or both of two diploma mill tokens.
In an uninspired battle of the straw men, two folks at Christianity Today's leadership blog, Out of Ur, debate the value of online churches.
Douglas Estes, the author of SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World, began the discussion with a defense of virtual churches. Estes attacks myths that "online church is not good, not healthy, and not biblical." He does so without a single link to a single blog or website which promotes or refers to his myth. And without reference to offline documentation.
Estes proceeds to demolish his undemonstrated myths with the argument that online churches are real even if they meet in "synthetic spaces:"
You may not want to meet in synthetic space—and I would not want to meet in a bar—but it doesn’t change the fact that when the people of God meet together for the purpose of glorifying Him, it’s a real church.
Estes says the "realness" of virtual churches should not be judged "based solely on select physical criteria."
Bob Hyatt, pastor of the Evergreen Community in Portland, Oregon, thunders back his equally undocumented argument that virtual churches are a bad idea.
"Can true community be mediated by a screen, or is it forged in the times at table, bearing one another’s burdens, serving the poor and one another together, at weddings and funerals, births and deaths … all the stuff that happens when I turn the screen off," he says.
Hyatt compares virtual churches to online marriages. He doesn't describe, refer to offline document documentation of or link to online marriages. He makes them up out of thin air, and moves right along as though his assertion creates them for us.
Standing upon his clay foundation of undocumented arguments, he asserts that virtual churches should use technology as part of a strategy to connect people, but plainly tell them, "This is not church."
"To be a part of the Body requires you to be present, fully present, to others in a way you can’t be online," he said. "Internet tools may enhance that presence when you are apart, but they can’t replace it. And nothing we do as a Church should ever communicate that they can."
Since neither author gives us sound reason to consider the validity of his arguments, we are left to wonder about their necessity.
Some churches are using online methods to reach people who would not be reached otherwise, as you can see from this article. Online is being employed to supplement offline church celebrations, as you can see here and here. And to supplement the live worship experience.
A look at church parking lots on Sunday tells us that some people prefer offline congregations enough to attend. Many millions of people, surveys of church attendance statistics tell us.
If either author had demonstrated the existence of a real-world debate, this collision of the confused straw men might remind of of the hoopla over contemporary worship. That debate suggests that most folks will eventually learn (if they haven't already) that it is ok to worship and even congregate in different ways.
Even virtually?
Richard Land
In a blistering Ethics Daily column, historian Richard V. Pierard answered Richard Land, whom he said "has demonstrated in recent days that he knows as little about ethics as he does religious liberty."
Pierard ably deconstructs Land's recent self-exculpatory remarks, but his most telling comment was to Southern Baptists in general. Specifically:
Southern Baptists should be just as disturbed by Land's statements because he has brought his denomination into disrepute. His half-hearted repentance included the suggestion that he would continue to expose the ideas of "lethal and deadly philosophies loose in 20th century Germany prior to the Nazis' ascendancy to power" that seemed to be relevant to contemporary life-and-death issues. In other words, it appears he will continue to draw on the Nazi analogy when it might help him in the struggle with other Christians who do not share his views on "life" issues.
The concerns many of us have about Land's own civility inevitably reflect back on the integrity of the denomination that appointed him and stands behind him. Both he and his superiors need to reflect carefully on what Christian speech is really all about and on their need to turn their backs on old ways of expressing disagreement. This is truly a question of "ethics."
Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, has made himself a member of the right-wing drum and bugle corps, stripping away with both hands the mantle of ethicist. He has abandoned both sound ethical logic and the facts in favor of empty political rhetoric punctuated by embarrassing stunts.
If that's what Southern Baptists want, they have it.
Bruce Prescott of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists agrees that Pierard's strongest arguments were addressed directly to Southern Baptists.
The best knownof Westgarrd's cartoons.
Two men from Chicago have been charged with plotting overseas attacks, including on the Danish newspaper which published cartoons about Islam. David Coleman Headley, 49, and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48, were arrested earlier this month. US prosecutors say Mr Headley travelled to Denmark twice to plan an attack on the Jyllands-Posten newspaper offices.
Both were arrested earlier this month.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported:
They are accused of targeting for assassination Danish newspaper cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who drew cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in 2005 that sparked violent riots around the Muslim world. Authorities raided a home and several businesses as part of the investigation.
The twelve most controversial cartoons provoking the 2005 riots are here.
An interactive, online hate-crime map was created by National Public Radio. Very nice, and Dan at Bold Faith Type wants a list of prosecutions of clergy "for their speech in the pulpit" in those areas.
Perhaps in an interactive map, please?
He assumes our Christian Right friends are ready with a list, since they argued so strenuously that a federal hate crimes law would "lead to the silencing of clergy."
Waiting . . .
Accounts of the incident provoke natural outrage and moral concern. Although we don't know how well those accounts will withstand future examination:
A 15-year-old girl was gang-raped, beaten, and robbed by six to ten men ranging in age from 15 to their early 20s on Saturday in Richmond, Calif., after leaving her high school homecoming dance. More appallingly, police say, over the course of two hours, as many as two dozen people witnessed the crime, but didn't interfere.
Some have already ascribed observer reactions to bystander effect. They may be correct, although the phenomenon is complex and not well-applied from a distance. We simply do not know, and the best-known incident of this kind is a caution against rush to judgment:
At 3:15 a.m. on March 13, 1964, Catherine Susan Genovese was raped and stabbed to death by a serial killer in a widely misreported incident which prompted research into diffusion of responsibility and the bystander effect.
The event itself, however, was not as originally reported. There may have been no bystanders who were in a position to help, and who failed to act. The defamatory moral judgment passed on people living in the area at the time were apparently wrongheaded.
In 2007, Rachel Manning, Mark Levine and Alan Collins published a study of it in American Psychologist:
This article argues that an iconic event in the history of helping research--the story of the 38 witnesses who remained inactive during the murder of Kitty Genovese--is not supported by the available evidence. Using archive material, the authors show that there is no evidence for the presence of 38 witnesses, or that witnesses observed the murder, or that witnesses remained inactive. Drawing a distinction between the robust bystander research tradition and the story of the 38 witnesses, the authors explore the consequences of the story for the discipline of psychology. They argue that the story itself plays a key role in psychology textbooks. They also suggest that the story marks a new way of conceptualizing the dangers of immersion in social groups. Finally, they suggest that the story itself has become a modern parable, the telling of which has served to limit the scope of inquiry into emergency helping.
There may be either more wrong in Richmond, Calif., or less, than we can responsibly infer from published accounts.
President Obama killed some costly defense projects and took the landmark civil rights step of extending federal hate crimes coverage to homosexuals when he signed the defense bill passed last week.
This photograph by Lynsey Addario is from "Congo/Women: Portraits of War," on view in the north gallery of the public lobby at the United Nations through Nov. 12.
It's about rape, used as a weapon of war in the Congo.
The prevalence and intensity of sexual violence in the Congo is described as the worst in the world.
The passage below is from The Physical and Psychological Impact of Rape - one of several on the associated Web site:
Frequently observed psychological effects include intense feelings of worthlessness and shame, guilt and culpability, social isolation aggravated by family and community rejection, depression, paranoia, and apathy. Often victims are left by their husbands, separated from their children, and reluctant to engage in normal daily activities.
Yes, protect the children against contracting H1N1 from Halloween treats (or giving it to someone else). Carefully, while remembering that the real horror of Halloween is pedestrian deaths.
Liz Szabo writes for USA Today:
Children are more than twice as likely to be killed by a car while walking on Halloween than any other night of the year, according to Safe Kids USA. More than 540 kids under age 14 are killed in pedestrian accidents each year. In an analysis of deaths from 2002 to 2006, the group found an average of 2.2 children are killed in pedestrian accidents from 4 to 10 p.m. on Halloween, compared with one child every other evening at the same time.
Halloween is the most dangerous day of the year for kids because they're out in large numbers and wearing costumes which are not designed to make them visible to motorists.
In addition to pedestrian safety, get the H1N1 vaccine before making your traditional Trick or Treat trips, follow the other Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tips and use this teachable evening to train the children in how to be and remain flu-safe.
Says the U.S. Department of Justice Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. Hence the busts, focused on arresting traffickers and rescuing children.
A German court has ruled that Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson, a member of the an ultra-traditionalist Catholic splinter group Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), has to pay a 12,000 Euros ($16,822) fine for incitement.
Pope Benedict XVI's decision to lift his excommunication and that of three other Lefebvrite bishops, Williamson denied in a televised interview that the Holocaust occurred. The interview was conducted near Regensburg shortly before the excommunications were lifted.He has two weeks to appeal and apparently will, even as the Vatican carries forward unification talks with SSPX.
For shame, sir.
Attempting to raise money for the defense of Scott Roeder, who is charged with first-degree murder in George Tiller's death, supporters planned an eBay auction. Planned, and written about by the Kansas City Star. And eBay says "no:"
"Based on the details we know about the anticipated listings, we believe these would violate our policy regarding offensive material," the company said in a statement issued to The Kansas City Star. "eBay will not permit the items in question to be posted to the eBay site, and they will be removed if they are posted."
How offensive?
Mark Silk explains:
Among the items they planned to auction is a prison drawing by Roeder of David and Goliath depicting David holding the head of Goliath with the name "Tiller" inscribed on Goliath's forehead. On the corpse are the words "child-murdering industry."
Perhaps it was not a flatly stated point of the overall effort to both rationalize and glorify violence. But that drawing. And calls for Roeder to use a "necessity defense," saying that Tiller's killing on May 31 was an act of justifiable homicide.
Accusing eBay of violating someone's First Amendment rights, and auction proponents are doing that, is a red herring.
H/T: Mark Silk
Richard Land of the unapology apology is back to foreign policy arm-waving. Yes. Recall that in September, Land and his Religious Right friends sent a hyperventilating open letter which left them looking foolish when Iran quickly gave ground to “weak” President Barak Obama by offering to have its nuclear experts meet with U.S. scientists.
Never mind either that or the fruits of subsequent diplomacy, now says Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission chief Land.
Because Iran can't be trusted.
Trusted in this case to live up to a U.N.-drafted proposal -- already endorsed by the United States, Russia and France -- to to ship much of its uranium abroad for enrichment and cut back their drive for domestic reprocessing capacity. A proposal to which Iran is to respond officially on Thursday to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Land apparently prefers the trade embargo he and his Religious Right friends recommended in the aforementioned letter -- an approach that would bring pain to the Iranian people in general and is unlikely to work .
Which, taken together with his approach to apologies, seems to put Land in the running for master of the unworkable.
Stay in the dark, Southern Baptists.
Great Commission Resurgence Task Force (GCRTF) member Ted Traylor told the Florida Baptist Witness that he “did some serious thinking” about the prospect of simultaneously leading the North American Mission Board (NAMB) presidential search committee.
He of course accepted, thus raising again the keystone question:
Will the troubled NAMB be merged with the troubled International Mission Board?Traylor acknowledged speculation the GCRTF may recommend merging IMB and NAMB or creating one new mission board to replace the current mission boards, but said, “I also know what is being discussed in the GCR meetings. However, I do not believe it is my place to discuss those things until we come to some solid conclusions.”
We already know SBC chief Johnny Hunt doesn't want anyone to talk about the fate of the recently troubled and, a well-respected Southern Baptist leader says, misconceived agency. So GCRTF members go on filling the air with fog.
Read the entire story and you will see Traylor either isn't reading or has decided not to heed Wade Burleson's warnings against attaching God's name to our decisions.
Byzantine ship using Greek fire in the late 11th century: from the Madrid Skylitzes manuscript.
Asked at WaPo's On Faith if Pope Benedict XVI's outreach to Anglicans was "poaching" disaffected Anglicans, atheist Richard Dawkins burst into flame.
Among other things, he wrote:
Poaching? Of course it is poaching. What else could you call it? Maybe it will succeed. If estimates are right that 1,000 Anglican clergymen will take the bait (no women, of course: they will swiftly be shown the door), what could be their motive? For some it will be a deep-seated misogyny (although they'll re-label it with a mendacious euphemism of some kind, which they'll call 'an important point of theological principle'). They just can't stomach the idea of women priests. One wonders how their wives can stomach a husband whose contempt for women is so visceral that he considers them incapable even of the humble and unexacting duties of a priest.
For some, the motive will be homophobic bigotry, and a consequent dislike of the efforts of decent church leaders such as the Archbishop of Canterbury to accept those whose sexual orientation happens to deviate from majority taste. Never mind that they will be joining an institution where buggering altar boys pervades the culture.
Yes, and he was just getting his flamethrower adjusted.
Holy Smoke (Damian Thompson) billowed back from the London Telegraph, blazing:
Richard Dawkins’s latest attack on the Catholic Church is worthy of a dribbling loony on the top of a bus. He calls the Church “the greatest force for evil in the world”, “an institution where buggering altar boys pervades the culture” and describes it “dragging its skirts in the dirt and touting for business like a common pimp”. (Pimps in skirts – that’s a new one.) And all in The Washington Post.
The peg for this piece? The Pope's offer to make special arrangements for Anglicans converting to Rome, a matter I would have thought was none of Prof Dawkins's business. But I'm not going to bother to argue with any of his points, because these are the ravings of a man who appears to have lost all sense of proportion. Seriously: is there something wrong with him?
Atheist PZ Myers responded with blistering deconstruction. along the way answering Holy Smoke author Damien Thompson's question:
Why, no, Damian! What's wrong with you?
Among those muttering from the pews is New Zealand Conservative, who sees in Dawkins' response evidence that "forces of darkness are gathering" against the pope's outreach.
Formed in a 1983 administrative division of the large and growing Episcopal Diocese of Dallas, and stripped of most of its conservatives in a series of actions following consecration of an openly gay New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson, the once profoundly conservative Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth is now effectively progressive.
As a result, 33 years after the Episcopal Church approved ordination of women, it is ready to ordain Deacon Susan Slaughter to the priesthood.
She is to be the first woman ordained to the priesthood in the history of the Fort Worth diocese, and probably a rare case in which outmigration of conservatives leaves behind a substantially more progressive diocese which takes such action.
The denomination-wide changes apparently aren't large enough thus far to cause anything other than sporadic reorientation. Specifically, total U.S. membership of active baptized members in 2007 was 2,154,572, according to the 2008 National Council of Churches Report. That indicates a 4.15% decline from the NCC's figure for 2006. ()
Along the same lines, Wikipedia reports:
In recent years many mainline denominations have experienced a decline in membership.[74] Once changes in how membership is counted are taken into consideration, the Episcopal Church's membership numbers were broadly flat throughout the 1990s, with a slight growth in the first years of the 21st century.[73][75][76][77][78] A loss of 115,000 members was reported for the years 2003–5, which has been attributed in part to controversy concerning ordination of homosexuals to the priesthood and the election of Gene Robinson (who is openly gay) as Bishop of New Hampshire.[79]
Or, looking at the 2009 edition of the Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, we find that decline in Episcopal Church membership (1.76%) was comparable to Presbyterian Church:USA (2.79%), United Church of Christ (6.01%) and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (1.35%).
This implies that the changes which have occasioned uproar apparently took place because there was substantial support for them in the church at large.
Barack Obama led the U.S. to secure a seat on the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), formed in 2006 over U.S. objections, and is using that platform to push back against the Organization of the Islamic Council (OIC) efforts to put legal teeth in its religious blasphemy ideas.
Implemented in treaty, the ideas will provide international cover to suppress minority religious groups.
On behalf of the OIC, Pakistan proposes "legal prohibition of publication of material that negatively stereotypes, insults or uses offensive language" on matters regarded by religious followers as "sacred or inherent to their dignity as human beings."
The result in practice is a favoring of specific religions over the speech of individuals. One need not be a liberal of any sort to see the danger. As Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Al Mohler wrote in his April 17 blog on that issue:
This United Nations Human Rights Council resolution offends Peter Singer, and it offends me as well. The United Nations has no right protect adherents of any religious belief system from being offended. It should expend its energies defending the religious liberty of all persons everywhere. That policy would put the offense where it belongs.
In that, he apparently agrees with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who said this week at the unveiling the State Department's annual report on international religious freedom:
Some claim that the best way to protect the freedom of religion is to implement so-called anti-defamation policies that would restrict freedom of expression and the freedom of religion. . . . I strongly disagree. The protection of speech about religion is particularly important since persons of different faiths will inevitably hold divergent views on religious questions. . . . [and she went on to argue for] the vigorous defense of both freedom of religion and expression.
An expert in International law, Noah Bialostozky argues that the US, "long-regarded as the leader of the human rights movement, which remains in the best position to engage its diplomatic and moral authority to encourage collective promotion of international human rights."
It is time to see how well that can be made to work. As the Christian Science Monitor argued editorially today, the Obama administration "should proceed with the vigor that Ms. Clinton talked about."
Don't tell the Global South Anglicans, who are led by crusading Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria. Their answer to the pope's join-us offer was "No thank you." Or the conservative, breakaway Anglican Church of North America. Who are clearly still devoted to the Anglican Communion.
Like non-conservatives who aren't the least tempted by the Vatican's offer, they've made it clear they aren't leading a swim across the Tiber.
Even so. During a meeting of the British traditionalist Anglican group Forward in Faith, the Reverend John Broadhurst asserted that "Anglican experiment is over."
For some in the UK perhaps, but whom else?
Lisa Fullam calls our attention to Maureen Dowd's October 24 column linking "the Vatican investigation of US women’s apostolic religious communities to the welcome extended to disgruntled Anglicans."
Dowd, who recalls well her years in Catholic elementary school, writes:
As the Vatican is trying to wall off the “brides of Christ,” Cask of Amontillado style, it is welcoming extreme-right Anglicans into the Catholic Church — the ones who are disgruntled about female priests and openly gay bishops. Il Papa is even willing to bend Rome’s most doggedly held dogma, against married priests — as long as they’re clutching the Anglicans’ Book of Common Prayer.
‘Most of the Anglicans who want to move over to the Catholic Church under this deal are people who have scorned women as priests and have scorned gay people,’ [author Kenneth] Briggs said. “The Vatican doesn’t care that these people are motivated by disdain.”
The ongoing discussion provoked at the online Catholic publication dotCommonweal is intense and worth a look.
Working a corner of the ecclesiastical press in which both publication editors and the top staff of an entire news agency have been forced to resign for doing their jobs, the independent Associated Baptist Press for reported Monday that a former Okla. pastor was sentenced to 10 years for molestation after he pled guilty on Oct. 13 to 10 counts of lewd molestation.
They were only a day behind Christa Brown at Stop Baptist Predators, who wrote:
In Oklahoma, Southern Baptist pastor Joshua Spires advanced in the ranks from youth pastor to senior pastor while sexually abusing a teen church girl every Sunday and calling it “consensual.”
Two full months ago, this Southern Baptist pastor confessed to repeated acts of child molestation. But no one in Baptistland has even bothered to remove him from the [Southern Baptist Convention] ministerial registry.
Both beat the Oklahoma Baptist Messenger, which has been singled out for praise by national Southern Baptist leaders and is the official state Southern Baptist publication of Oklahoma. If the Messenger follows its recent pattern of publication, it will never acknowledge that the story broke and was covered on its beat.
Of course clerical sexual predation is a controversial issue for the Southern Baptist Convention. That's just one reason serious instances are news, which credible Baptist news publications must report, not kerfuffles which may at an editor's option be overlooked.
The North Carolina Biblical Recorder has the ABP story on its home page.
When no one's looking: A video report explaining how pimps target runaways, trick them into under-age prostitution and often keep them there, despite law enforcement efforts to intervene.
We must protect one another against this by better-protecting runaways and better-serving the troubled families from which they flee.
Three California San Joaquin Valley area Presbyterian churches finalized their split from the 2.3-million member Presbyterian Church (USA) yesterday and are part of a steady trickle to the smaller, far more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
The issues are convoluted and of late have to do with the shift of the PC(USA) toward acceptance of homosexual members.
Read the entire story here.
In France, where the Church of Scientology is officially regarded as a cult, judges fined it almost a million dollars on Tuesday and stopped short of banning the group only because of a twist law passed just before the trial began.
The law was subsequently revised thus opening the possibility that Scientology could be banned in France in the future, under a different set of charges.
Read the entire story here.
Read about "Crash" director Paul Haggis resignation from Scientology here.
This may not be another case of institutional concealment. But how did the affair begin in a hospital and continue for two decades without institutional collusion?
The Irish Independent reports:
It was learned yesterday that Richard Burke, 60-year-old Archbishop of Benin, a city in southern Nigeria, stepped aside earlier this year pending the outcome of an ecclesiastical trial by the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog body, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The Kiltegan missionary archbishop from Fethard, Co Tipperary, who is believed to be in the United States, has not commented on the allegation. He is accused by Dolores Atwood, a 40-year-old married woman now living in Canada, of sexually abusing her when she was a minor, aged 14, and ill in a Nigerian hospital that he visited as a priest.
She also alleges that she suffered "emotional torture" during a 20-year secret affair that he conducted with her contrary to his vow of celibacy.
Read the entire story here.
Law enforcement authorities have recovered 52 children and arrested 60 pimps allegedly involved in child prostitution, the FBI announced Monday. More than 690 people in all were arrested on state and local charges, the FBI stated.
. . .
The three-day operation, tagged Operation Cross Country IV, included enforcement actions in 36 cities across 30 FBI divisions nationwide. It is part of the FBI's ongoing Innocence Lost National Initiative, which was created in 2003 with the goal of ending sex trafficking of children in the United States.
The Guardian reports that most of the children rescued from prostitution were teenage girls, but one was "just 10 years old."
To date, the 34 Innocence Lost Task Forces and Working Groups have recovered nearly 900 children from the streets. The investigations and subsequent 510 convictions have resulted in lengthy sentences, including multiple 25-years-to-life sentences and the seizure of more than $3.1 million in assets.
“It is repugnant that children in these times could be subjected to the great pain, suffering, and indignity of being forced into sexual slavery for someone else's profit,” said Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division, “but Cross Country IV has shown us that the scourge of child prostitution still exists on the streets of our cities. The FBI, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and all the state and local law enforcement agencies that contributed to this operation are to be commended for their dedication to this cause. We will all continue to work tirelessly to end the victimization of innocent children.”
According to Shared Hope International’s report on "Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking, America’s Prostituted Children [.DOC]:"
A domestic minor sex trafficking victim who is rented for sex acts with five different men per night, for five nights per week, for an average of five years, would be raped by 6,000 buyers during the course of her victimization through prostitution.
Celia Williamson, a professor of social work and a prostitution researcher at the University of Toledo [Ohio], says that in Toledo, she says, 48% of adult street prostitutes started when they were younger than 18.
Richard J. Estes and Neil Alan Weiner University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work's Center for the Study of Youth Policy estimated in their massive 2001 study, The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children In the U. S., Canada and Mexico [.pdf], that:
Poor Ross Douthat of the New York Times divined Pope Benedict XVI's opening to the Anglicans as a recruitment drive for a Christian/Islam conflict. Whereupon he was blasted by Glenn Greenwald and ridiculed by Mark Silk.
That may disappoint the Islamophobes, who could for a moment have thought they had an intellectual leader at the Old Gray Lady.
Sigh.
Texans overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment in 2005 bolstering the state's ban on same sex marriage and on Oct. 1 Dallas district Judge Tena Callahan ruled the ban unconstitutional.
Her ruling may be overturned, but remember that until 2003, Texas law forbade sex between consenting adults of the same gender. That law was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in Lawrence et al. v. Texas at a time when only a minority of the U.S. public supported such laws.
Same-sex marriage apparently does not yet have majority support in the U.S., but the ground is shifting.
That is in part because some of the arguments against it are strained. But it is also a generational shift. A majority of younger voters support it and their attitudes appear to be fixed.
The theological right rages, but in part because the young are the future, church policies have been evolving toward acceptance. Church by church and denomination by denomination by denomination ... .
Analyst Nate Silver wrote recently:
Public opinion is moving toward acceptance of gay marriage. But it is doing so very slowly, at a rate of perhaps a point or two per year, and has at least a few years to go before it is the majority opinion. In the near term, the more relevant dimension may be 'passion', or depth of feeling. It used to be that the conservatives were ahead on passion -- they were strongly opposed to gay marriage, whereas liberals were, at best, lukewarmly in favor of it. Increasingly, that dynamic seems to be reversing.
... it would seem that the grassroots energy on this issue has reversed, with the pro-gay marriage side feeling more emboldened than the traditional marriage groups. This is true both outside the state of Maine and within it.
Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski clearly didn't just stumble into what Mark Silk termed "None Zone" during a recent NPR interview with Melissa Block.
Kulongoski was born in rural Missouri in 1940 and reared from age four (when his father died) in a St. Louis Catholic boys' home, Kulongoski acknowledged last year that he hadn't attended his apparent home church, Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Salem, since 2006. That was part of the uproar when Archbishop John Vlazny of Portland denounced Kulongoski for being among the honorary hosts at a National Abortion Rights Action Leagued fund raiser.
Kulongoski's supporters probably didn't pause last week when he told Block during the interview [transcript]:
Sometimes, you have to get out like this to really understand why you do what you do," he says. "This is what Oregon's all about. This is who we are as people — on the natural resource side of our lives. ... I must admit, I may not be as religious but I'm very spiritual — and I believe if there is a God, this is where he lives. He's on the river, he's in the mountains — this is what it's all about."
In a different state this would likely be of more political import, but as Silk observers:
. . . not (as he implies) in Oregon. Its rate of religious identification is among the lowest in the country; and environmentalism is its civil religion. Kulongoski's statement is more or less equivalent to the governor of Alabama talking about what a devoted Baptist he is.
Annual % change in SBC membership
Nor should it be startling at this juncture that a governor reared by Catholic nuns is a member of what demographic history suggests will become the largest U.S. religious denomination.
How Southern Baptists and others of evangelical bent will respond is an important issue hereabouts. For decades Southern Baptists have explored exclusionst rhetoric as a solution. Not effective, thus far. Membership numbers are in unarrested decline. And the increasing shrillness of rhetoric from Southern Baptist political spokesmen like Richard Land is whipsawing whatever civility was left in public discourse.
Whatever the political weather is like among the Oregon fly fishermen, the forecast down South is more thunderstorms.
Scientology isn't our idea of a religion, but to 'Crash' Director Paul Haggis, it was. He resigned in a blistering four-part letter [1, 2, 3, 4] at the blog of Marty Rathbun, a former high-level Scientology official who left the church and is a critic of it.
New York Magazine's Adam K. Raymond writes:
It all started when a San Diego church publicly supported Prop 8. Haggis asked [Scientology national spokesman Tommy] Davis to denounce its actions but Davis never went through with it. Then the already-pissed Haggis read an interview in which Davis denied Scientology's practice of "disconnection" (forcing members to cut off communication with loved ones who oppose Scientology). But Haggis knew disconnection first-hand. His wife was forced to cut ties with her parents. The last straw came when Haggis read about the smear tactics Scientology used against its former members. That's when he knew it was time to go.
Though it has lost the author of Million Dollar Baby and Flags of Our Fathers, it is still the church of Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Jenna Elfman.
For now. Even a cult has to adapt to shifting views of gay rights and repair key internal contradictions, or pay in lost members.
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