Homophobia go the way of slavery in matters of faith?

The measured tone of Spokane, Washington, Bishop Blase Cupich's letter on the same-sex marriage referendum attracted the attention of Bold Faith Type. He stood firm on church teachings but, to his considerable credit, also said:

Proponents of the redefinition of marriage are often motivated by compassion for those who have shown courage in refusing to live in the fear of being rejected for their sexual orientation. It is a compassion that is very personal, for those who have suffered and continue to suffer are close and beloved friends and family members. It is also a compassion forged in reaction to tragic national stories of violence against homosexuals, of verbal attacks that demean their human dignity, and of suicides by teens who have struggled with their sexual identity or have been bullied because of it.

...

I also want to be very clear that in stating our position the Catholic Church has no tolerance for the misuse of this moment to incite hostility towards homosexual persons or promote an agenda that is hateful and disrespectful of their human dignity.

At Spiritual Politics, Mark Silk gently suggests that the bishop take an additional step:

At the risk of seeming unappreciative, I would urge Cupich, sub specie rationis, to promise that if evidence for bad social consequences from SSM fails to materialize, he will cease urging his church's position on society at large. All that would be left at that point would be his religious convictions, and as I expect he would agree, these ought not be imposed on those outside his faith community.

After all, he writes, slavery was "a cornerstone of society" when the church was young. No more.

Indeed. The Southern Baptist Convention, originally formed in part around support of slavery, last week found itself chiding a Mississippi church which refused to host the wedding ceremony of a black couple. The church apologized and will presumably sin no more.

GOP Rep. West's Chick-fil-A slap in the face to the Congressional Black Caucus

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) pulled the Chick-fil-A chicken and biscuits stunt about six months ago but recent events brought it back to mind. Jennifer Bendery writes at Huffington Post

"We have a rotation in the Congressional Black Caucus where every member provides the lunch one of the weeks when we meet," Hastings said in a Monday interview. The lunches, he said, are often quite delicious.

"We have fried chicken. And we have catfish and BBQ. We do not have watermelon, although sometimes people will have fruit. We serve a full course meal with collard greens. We have Jamaican beans and rice," Hastings said. But West "sent Chick-fil-A with biscuits. Ok?"

"That was an 'in your face.' Every member of the Congressional Black Caucus that was there was offended," he said.

Asked more specifically why lawmakers were insulted, Hastings said it was because they saw West's actions as making a statement in support of the conservative views held by Chick-fil-A leaders. West is the only Republican member of the caucus.

Everyone, certainly including Rep. West, has a right to his opinion. Being taken seriously, not so much.

Abuse at First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana (and elsewhere)

Southern Baptist Ed Stetzer is right to assert that Jack Schapp was fired as pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, over sexual "abuse" of a teenage girl Not "adultery."

Technically, Schapp was fired for adultery and the FBI is investigating whether the girl was the legal age of consent, not just in Illinois but also Indiana. But the problem is predatory abuse of power, by the pastor.

The power differential between Schapp and his victim made consent effectively and in some states legally impossible:

... the church environment is remarkably well-suited to the needs of predators, who carry out a form of rape. Dr. Gary Schoener, Executive Director of the Walk-In Counseling Center in Minneapolis which serves both offenders and victims of clergy sexual abuse, told the St. Petersberg Times that “17 states see even adult relationships with priests as a type of statutory rape. The victim can’t possibly consent because the power relationship so clouds the issue.”

More

• Clerical sexual offenders are worse
• Profile & techniques of clerical predators
• Why predatory clergy flourish
• Clerical sexual abuse of adults is commonplace
• Religious sex offenders are the worst

Stetzer focuses on the age difference and comes to the same conclusion:

A 54-year old pastor taking advantage, both sexually and emotionally, of a 16-year old girl goes far beyond the bounds of desecrating the marital bed and making immoral choices. This is a prime example of abusing the power and trust of an office. It was part of the problem at Penn State, and it is the problem in this situation.

Stetzer urges pastors to "speak up" about the abuse and in the comments Christa Brown takes him to task for saying and doing too little himself:

Southern Baptists have also had way too many child-sex-abuse and cover-up scandals among their clergy. The Southern Baptist track record is no better than the Independent Fundamental Baptists. There is a volunteer-compiled list of Southern Baptist scandals at StopBaptistPredators.

To Ed Stetzer and other Southern Baptists, I say this: Speaking up would be a start, but words are not nearly enough. You must implement cooperative denomination-wide clergy accountability systems similar to those that exist in other major faith groups and stop using “local church autonomy” as an excuse for denominational do-nothingness. Clean up your own faith group.

Stetzer is right (and Brown is right to in effect push it back at him) when he writes:

Those who justify enable more such scandals and endanger more children.

He cannot by that standard justify his failure to speak with equal force to the well-known Southern Baptist failure to protect children and others from abuse by pastors and church staff. It's an enduring national scandal. In 2008 the Southern Baptist Convention's refusal to create a central database of staff and clergy who have been either convicted of or indicted on charges of molesting minors, was one of Time magazine's top ten underreported news stories of the year. They use church autonomy as an excuse for inaction, and the number of lives avoidably blighted by abuse grows and grows.

Is clerical sexual abuse coded into the modern church's authority?

At The Immanent Frame, Mark Jordan of the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis writes:

The possibility of authorizing abuse theologically follows too easily from the always exceptional status claimed for modern church power. In modern Catholic contexts, official languages often pretend to be exempt from qualification, questioning, or appeal. They are absolute languages. They function in a state of exception. When that rhetorical character is extended to traditional images of a masculinized God or angel who ravishes—rapes—souls that are gendered as feminine, then erotic domination seems to receive divine blessing. I’m not objecting to mystical writing. I’m pointing to a consequence of moving older mystical or liturgical languages into a modern system that endows some church speech with an incontestable and literal authority. Under a regime that claims divine exemption for its decrees, mustn’t erotic metaphors of divine domination sometimes seem to authorize sexual demands by priests? Turn the question around: imagine what you would have to change in present claims for church language to prevent the violent misapplication of old metaphors for God’s love.

Which brings me to the last rhetoric I want to mention: the homoerotic undertone of ecclesiastical obedience. The documents from the Meffan case are not homoerotic in the obvious sense—they are not about male-male or female-female abuse. They concern sexual acts between a man and girls or young women. But the male and female bodies here allow us to notice another level at which the homoerotic can appear in church speech. Take as an example Meffan’s letter to Cardinal Law, with its touches of studied obsequiousness, its acts of enticing submission. Those rhetorical gestures reveal desires sedimented in now standard forms of clerical power.

Jordan's analysis is a part of Immanent Frame's compelling series, Sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

Wheaton sues (abortively) to strike abortion drug mandate (which it obeyed as an Illinois state mandate)

The Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Press and echoes like the North Carolina Biblical Reporter reported it last month when Illinois' Wheaton College joined Catholic groups in a lawsuit over an Affordable Care Act requirement that insurance plans cover birth control.

They have been silent about subsequent news that Wheaton cannot pursue this matter of evangelical conviction for a year because it has, perhaps since 2003, been providing insurance to faculty and staff that includes the contraceptive coverage over which it is in high legal dudgeon.

As Grant Gallico summarized it:

In order to qualify for safe harbor, a religious employer must not cover — or have recently covered — services it now wants to be exempt from covering. Duncan didn’t explain this on the call, but in paragraph 120 of Wheaton’s legal complaint (.pdf), you find this: “They currently provide coverage for certain contraceptives and inadvertently provided coverage for a short period after February 10, 2012 for other now-excluded contraceptives, making it impossible for Wheaton to make the required Safe Harbor certification.”

Sounds like Wheaton was paying for emergency contraception coverage for its employees — for how short a period it doesn’t say.

That brings us right up against the moral reasoning for Wheaton's thus far abortive legal action. When President Philip Ryken rejected the Obama administration's proposed accommodation exempting religious employers from paying for contraception coverage, while allowing employees to receive the coverage separately from the insurer, he said, “Any accommodation that still involves us in connection with an insurer that provides abortion services still, though indirectly, nevertheless implicates us morally in that action.”

But Wheaton's insurance coverage history apparently doesn't rise to that standard.

Gallico dug out the current source of Wheaton's coverage for faculty and staff and It's Blue Cross/BlueShield of Illinois:

And while Blue Cross pays for emergency contraception for thousands of enrollees who don’t work for Wheaton, it also covers an actual abortion drug — Mifeprex — which, the drug maker’s website points out, Blue Cross covers “to the same extent as surgical abortions.”

None of that fits neatly into the Southern Baptist narrative of Wheaton et al heroically resisting reduction of their freedom (although they are actually attacking their employees' freedom to make those decisions) of religion, but it still deserves to be reported.

Half a century since prescient Catholic clerical abuse warning

Half a century ago, Gerald Michael Cushing Fitzgerald, the Catholic priest who co-founded the Congregation of the Society of the Paraclete, informed the Holy See of sweeping clerical sex abuse problems in the U.S. and recommended a solution:

...a more distinct teaching in the last years of the seminary of the heavy penalty involved in tampering with the innocence (or even non-innocence) of little ones." Regarding priests who have "fallen into repeated sins ... and most especially the abuse of children, we feel strongly that such unfortunate priests should be given the alternative of a retired life within the protection of monastery walls or complete laicization.

Fitzgerald's view of abusers was as relentless as the malady they suffer. In a letter to Archbishop James Byrne, his ecclesiastical sponsor and co-founder of the Paracletes, Fitzgerald wrote:

May I beg your excellency to concur and approve of what I consider a very vital decision on our part - that we will not offer hospitality to men who have seduced or attempted to seduce little boys or girls. These men Your Excellency are devils and the wrath of God is upon them and if I were a bishops I would tremble when I failed to report them to Rome for involuntary laicization....It is for this class of rattlesnake I have always wished the island retreat - but even an island is too good for these vipers of whom the Gentle master said - it were better they had not been born - this is an indirect way of saying damned, is it not?

Catholic clergy abuse crisis expert Patrick J. Wall explains that "The Holy See reacted to Father Fitzgerald’s warnings in line with tradition: The report was filed away in the Holy See’s Secret Archives and with no action."

So we have this week Kansas City priest, the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, pleading guilty to five child pornography charges. The incidents were relatively recent (not decades ago) and Ratigan likely to spend the rest of his life in prison.

His bishop, Robert Finn, faces trial on Sept. 24 for failing to properly report the suspected abuse when he learned of it.

That will not be the first prosecution of a ranking church official.

Two weeks ago, Catholic Monsignor William Lynn was sentenced to three to six years in prison for his role in covering the sex abuse of predatory priests.

While in Australia the pattern of unspooling revelation repeats itself. And church concern about scandal and cost apparently continues to outweigh concern about the victims.

How the Biblical Recorder helped fry Chick-fil-A

The North Carolina Biblical Recorder almost made itself Chick-fil-A central.

It began quietly on July 2 with publication of a puff piece by Recorder Editor Allan Blume about Chick-fil-A chief operating author Dan Cathy, which said in part:

"We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that. ... We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that," Cathy emphasized. "We intend to stay the course," he said. "We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles."[22]

The Biblical Recorder's online presence is small (comparable to Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson's one-man blog), and the article attracted little attention.

On the same day, the watchdog group Equality Matters published an article detailing donation of almost $2 million to anti-gay groups by the WinShape Foundation, Chick-fil-A's charitable arm. Specifically:

• Marriage & Family Foundation: $1,188,380
• Fellowship Of Christian Athletes: $480,000
• National Christian Foundation: $247,500
• New Mexico Christian Foundation: $54,000 
• Exodus International: $1,000
• Family Research Council: $1,000
• Georgia Family Council: $2,500

The Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Press reposted the Biblical Recorder story on July 16. The Baptist Press has a more significant Web readership, and the issues raised by the article began attracting considerable attention. The Biblical Recorder began publishing almost every Baptist Press article on the subject, thus vigorously promoting Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, and failing to enlighten its readers about the true sources of the anger directed at Chick-fil-A.

Apart from a contrived argument (overlooking the Equality Matters material and more inflammatory Cathy statements on June 16) that the original story had been "distorted" by mainstream media, the Recorder appears to have taken no actual editorial position of its own.

Fortunately, immediate past editor of the Biblical Recorder Norman Jameson took one on twitter:

Exactly. Southern contrived chicken. Unenlightening, even if it did produce record one-day profits for Chick-fil-A.

Law professors oppose further 'compromise' on Obamacare contraception coverage

Attempts to extend the religious liberty exemption to deny women the health insurance coverage for contraception they are due under the Affordable Care Act are fundamentally misguided, argue 170 law professors from major law schools all over the country [.pdf]. In a letter to "President Obama and the Congressional Leadership," they write:

Today, the egalitarian notion that every American deserves to enjoy religious freedom is under attack from those who would cede employees’ religious-liberty rights to corporate executives and nonprofit directors. In this cramped and one-sided view of religious freedom, supervisors are entitled to decide, based on their religious sentiments, whether their employees will be permitted to enjoy essential health benefits without the slightest concern for their religious beliefs. In particular, advocates claim that the Constitution gives all employers the right to veto their employees’ health-insurance coverage of contraception.

This view, which is espoused by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and others, is both wrong as a matter of law and profoundly undemocratic. Nothing in our nation’s history or laws permits a boss to impose his or her religious views on non-consenting employees. Indeed, this nation was founded upon the basic principle that every individual – whether company president or assistant janitor – has an equal claim to religious freedom.

...

The federal government must continue to protect the rights of women who need insurance laws so that they may make reproductive choices consistent with their individual conscience. Religious freedom must not provide a justification to deprive women of legal rights they should enjoy as employees and citizens. To the contrary, the First Amendment specifically preserves space for their religious liberty, and secures their right to act as individuals who exercise their own conscience on matters pertaining to their faith, body, and health.

Further misguided compromise is an abbreviation of individual rights, not an extension of religious liberty.

Read the entire letter here [.pdf].

[H/T: Baptist Joint Committee For Religious Liberty]

The Rev. Owens' NOM astroturf ruse

When the Rev. William Owens called for President Obama to recant his stand in favor of same-sex, marriage, CNN, NBC, the New York Post, the Christian Post and others treated the black pastor's claim to speak for thousands of members of a Coalition of African-Americans Pastors (CAAP) as a valid news story. There was, as intended, hyperventilating speculation that Obama's stand on gay marriage would somehow cost him "the African American vote."

Not taken in was Lisa Miller of the Washington Post's "On Faith" column. She wrote:

In reality, though, Owens isn’t a story. He’s a figurehead in what political operatives call an “Astroturf” campaign. It looks like a grass-roots movement, but it’s really a political stunt. And his threat is not a threat

Longtime religious liaison for the National Organization for Marriage, a Southern Poverty Law Center hate group, he's simply attempting to carry out the NOM wedge strategy. As Think Progress explained:

To see what NOM is trying to do here, one need only look at that leaked internal memo: “Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage.” Bill Owens is that spokesperson, even though CAAP only boasts about a dozen members. CAAP’s only purpose since its founding has been to attack same-sex marriage. According to Owens yesterday, there is “not one issue more important than holding the family together.”

Having contrived the vague, unpersuasive appearance of something, NOM then went out and proclaimed it to be real:

To drive home the point: The day after Owens’s press conference, NOM’s president, Brian Brown, went on Fox and said that “key Democratic constituencies do not support same-sex marriage.” NOM created a truth and then went out and proclaimed it.

Yet CAAP is still transparently a NOM vanity publication for which their is no broad market. This cynical series of manipulations underestimates the intelligence of its target market.

Repeal of DADT led one chaplain out of the Southern Baptist Convention (into the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship)

Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell did affect the religious freedom of chaplains, thanks to Southern Baptists:

Remember the dire warnings from religious right groups that the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would destroy military chaplains’ freedom of religion and right to follow their conscience on matters regarding same-sex relationships? Turns out they were right, but the threat isn’t from gay couples or the military hierarchy—it’s from the Southern Baptist Convention. Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin recounts the tale of Air Force Col. Timothy Wagoner, who was present at—not even officiating—a union ceremony between two men at the chapel he oversees. “I wouldn’t miss it,” Wagoner told Army Times, “I don’t feel I’m compromising my beliefs… I’m supporting the community.”

That was enough to get Wagoner hauled before the SBC’s North American Mission Board, which emailed a letter to all Southern Baptist military chaplains reaffirming the church’s position on same-sex unions. More is planned, including a videoconference for senior chaplains.

Wagoner is still a chaplain, as The Christian Post reports:

Col. Timothy Wagoner, who serves at an Air Force base in New Jersey, left the Southern Baptist Convention and joined the more progressive Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. The long-time chaplain confirmed his switch to The Associated Press on Friday.

"I find very little that is more important and nothing that is more exhilarating than providing for the religious freedoms and spiritual care of all service members and their families – and will joyfully continue to do so," Wagoner, senior chaplain at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, said to AP.

[H/T Religion Dispatches]

Not a 'Christian nation:' A 'mission field'

The U.S. is not a Christian nation agrees the leadership of National Association of Evangelicals

President Obama has taken plenty of heat in conservative Christian circles for a remark he made in 2006 in which he said that that United States was no longer “just” a Christian nation, but was religiously diverse. Now, it turns out, he has allies for that view: evangelical Christian leaders.

In a statement issued Tuesday, the National Assn. of Evangelicals said that when it surveyed selected evangelical leaders about whether the United States was a Christian nation, 68% said no.

"Christian nation" may not be a Biblically appropriate reference, the association suggested:

"Much of the world refers to America as a Christian nation, but most of our Christian leaders don't think so," said Leith Anderson, NAE President. "The Bible only uses the word 'Christian' to describe people and not countries. Even those who say America is a Christian nation admit that there are lots of non-Christians and even anti-Christian beliefs and behaviors."

America is, however, a mission field:

Evangelical leaders said that regardless of whether they would call the United States a Christian nation or not, America is fertile ground for evangelization. "America is one of the world's great mission fields that the Church has been called to reach in this generation," said George Wood, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God denomination.

SBC's Richard Land is retiring, next October

Next October? Seriously, and having lost his radio show over racially charged remarks and plagiarism, the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty head Richard Land says that retirement will free him to consider other options.

He has experience Nazi-baiting Democratic officials, offering apologies and unapologies and then reneging on his promise to stop making such comparisons.

He has been ardent in his support for the Defense of Marriage Act, which is apparently unconstitutional.

Remember his doubletalk about sexual predators?

And he was closely identified with the 2010 Lie of the Year:

PolitiFact editors and reporters have chosen "government takeover of health care" as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats' shellacking in the November elections.

Land's resume for political perspicacity includes pushing the disastrous Sarah Palin toward the thereafter doomed John McCain presidential campaign.

It goes on and on. As it will apparently continue to.

Plurality American support for gay marriage

A clear plurality of American public support for gay marriage is evident in polling by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in a survey of 2,973 adults conducted from June 28-July 9. This is a dramatic change from 2004, when 60% of those polled opposed gay marriage. The long-term trend has been inexorable, in part because "Younger generations express higher levels of support for same-sex marriage." Both the magnitude and strength of opposition have declined.

Among religious groups, majority opposition is sustained only by evangelical protestants. That leaves the Catholic bishops out of touch with self-described Catholics, 52% of whom Pew found to be in support of gay marriage. More specifically:

Nearly six-in-ten white non- Hispanic Catholics (59%) favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry, as do 57% of Hispanic Catholics.

Politically, support has risen among Democrats and independents. Some two thirds of Democrats support gay marriage.

For years, the trend for men and women has been an increase in support for gay marriage.

There was then every public opinion reason for the Biblical Recorder to expect a strong response to its Chick-fil-A story.

The argument by Louisiana Baptist Message Editor Kelly Boggs for majority support of Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy's anti-gay views, willfully confuses various ballot box results with overarching public opinion. Nor does Mike Huckabee's Chick-fil-A appreciation day alter either the data or its direction.

The challenge for evangelicals is better addressed by Southern Baptist Pastor Wade Burleson of Enid, Oklahoma, who is concerned about who will best witness to "the next generation." For among the young, the there is clear majority (and growing) acceptance of gay marriage. The polling data suggests that the view most likely to prevail was expressed by Rev. Dr. Angela M. Yarber, of is Wake Forest Baptist Church at Wake Forest University, in an open letter to Chick-fil-A's Cathy:

We are the only Baptist church in the country with two lesbians as head pastors. I serve a diverse congregation; many of our members are LGBT families raising children. And I refuse to look into their eyes and tell them that their families do not deserve the same rights as your family. For me, that is unethical. It is un-American. And it is unchristian.

CHA again steps forward to remind us of health reform's benefits

Sr. Carol Keehan, DC, President of the Catholic Health Association (CHA) reminds us that the Affordable Care Act is providing new or better insurance coverage to children, young adults, seniors and small business owners:

The Catholic health ministry worked hard to enact this law because it would defend life and human dignity, provide health care access to vulnerable persons and hard-working families and reflect the values of a fair and compassionate nation. In large measure, the law is already achieving these important goals.

Just a few examples of how provisions in the ACA are helping Americans right now:

• At least 3 million young adults (under the age of 26) have been able to stay on their parents’ insurance plan.
• Some 54 million people of all ages have received free or preventive services like mammograms, colonoscopies, physical exams and cholesterol screenings.
• At least 3.6 million seniors have saved $2.1 billion on their prescription drugs, an average of $600 per senior.
• More than 50,000 people with serious illnesses have obtained coverage through state high-risk plans put in place by ACA.
• Small businesses across the country have received tax credits to help offset the cost of providing coverage to their employees.

The law also includes funding for states to develop programs that assist pregnant and parenting women. The funds grant women access to a network of supportive services that can help them complete high school or postsecondary degrees and gain access to health care, child care, family housing and services for those who are victims of domestic or sexual violence .The ACA’s provisions for pregnant and parenting women have often been lost in the clutter of coverage but represent pro-life policies that CHA strongly supported as the law was being written.

In 2014, additional parts of the law will take effect, beginning with state-based health insurance exchanges where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for affordable health insurance policies. Those who qualify for subsidies will receive help paying premium costs. Medicaid will expand to cover more people who do not currently qualify for the program but also can’t afford insurance on their own.

For low-income families, and for the hospitals and other providers that treat them, Medicaid is a lifeline – a crucial program that connects vulnerable persons with the medical and preventive care they need.

These benefits are for the CHA, and were from the beginning intended to be, a reflection of Catholic religious values:

In 2007, CHA collaborated with our members across the country to develop a set of principles outlining our expectations for health reform. That document, “Our Vision for U.S. Health Care,” drew inspiration from Catholic social teaching and named the core values of human dignity, concern for the poor and vulnerable, justice, the common good and stewardship as the optimal foundation of a system that “creates and sustains a strong, healthy national community.”

The document included six principles for a smart and equitable health care system, starting with 100% access, and it became an advocacy tool for CHA and our members. In 2010, we published an updated version of the document, “Realizing Our Vision for U.S. Health Care” to show how the ACA corresponds with most of the expectations we had named.

This is in refreshing contrast with those among the Catholic Bishops and evangelical protestants who have been busy trying to cripple health reform, rather than celebrating its benefits.

[H/T dotCommonweal]

Oops: Jesus wasn't an Anglo Saxon ('White')

Put aside the Mormon white Jesus of Mitt Romney and one may seek the truth Jamie Reno writes:

Romney 2008 campaign pin

Most, if not all, scientists and theologians now agree that Jesus was likely neither the black man espoused by Obama's former longtime church nor the tall, blue-eyed white man of Romney’s lifelong church.

Back in 2000, a cover story in Popular Mechanics, of all publications, titled “The Real Face of Jesus,” sought scientific answers to this ancient question. With the help of Israeli and British forensic anthropologists and computer programmers, the magazine concluded that Jesus probably had a broad peasant's face, dark olive skin, short curly hair, and a prominent nose. And, the researchers concluded, he would have been 5-foot-1 and weighed 110 pounds.

Not at all the image a lot of us saw on our Sunday School class walls when we were children. But we were children, then.

Regnum Christi school says it is reforming ...

The Legion of Christ's Regnum Christi, reports the Los Angeles Times, "says it is revamping a specialized high school program for teenage girls after dozens of alumni denounced psychological abuses they say they endured that resulted in eating disorders, stress-induced ailments and depression."

Former students of Regnum Christi schools have been blogging about their ordeals at a blog called "49 Weeks A year."

The totalitarian management style of the Legion is well-documented, as is its corruption and eventual Vatical-forced change.

Founded by a man who apparently abused his own offspring, the Legion has finally been told by the Vatican that it needs to rethink its identity before going forward with internal reform.

Indeed.

Baptist predator victim wins and still has to go back to court

Clerical sex abuse victims are repeatedly retraumatized in court, albeit not usually to degree of a Lake County, Florida, man.

Jurors in May found "the Florida Baptist Convention liable for a former pastor who sexually abused a 13-year-old boy,” but at least part of the blame for his abuse "rested with the Florida Baptist Association."

Now the question of what organization is financially liable for the abuse inflicted by Southern Baptist pastor Douglas Myers is to go back to court again, possibly twice.

---

Southern Baptists have made it almost impossible to get any kind of verdict against a state convention, despite a proliferation of issues like those raised in the Myers case..

Want to know more? Christa Brown explains how the Southern Baptist Convention masks its clerical sex abuse problems [.pdf].

Clerical sex offenders are worse

Clerical sex offenders are more likely to use force than their peers who are not men of the cloth. A scientific study comparing matched samples of clerical and non-clerical sex offenders found:

The majority of cleric-sex offenders suffered from a sexual disorder (70.8%), predominantly homosexual pedophilia, as measured by phallometric testing, but did not differ from the control groups in this respect. The clerics were comparable to the other two groups in most respects, but tended to show less antisocial personality disorders and somewhat more endocrine disorders. The most noteworthy features differentiating the clerics from highly educated matched controls were that clerics had a longer delay before criminal charges were laid, or lacked criminal charges altogether, and they tended to use force more often in their offenses.

Church sex offenders in general apparently do more harm than their unchurched peers:

… that stayers (those who maintained religious involvement from childhood to adulthood) had more sexual offense convictions, more victims, and younger victims, than other groups. Results challenge assumptions that religious involvement should, as with other crime, serve to deter sexual offending behavior.

Special pleadings on behalf of clerical and otherwise churched offenders, pleadings like and more extreme than those which greeted Msgr. William J. Lynn's sentence this week, are indeed outrageous, as Susan Matthews argues. It will be good and just if the Irish Times is right and leaders who have protected and enabled predators are more frequently brought to justice.

H/T: Bilgrimage

Scotland on the way to legalizing gay marriage in civil & religious ceremonies

Opposition has come from religious institutions:

The Roman Catholic church, backed by senior Muslim organisations and evangelical and presbyterian churches, organised a huge postcard and internet petition campaign against the proposals.

It has been overwhelmed by popular support:

...detailed responses using the Scottish government's own online consultation document showed a majority in favour of gay marriage: by 65% to 35% against. Major public opinion polls also showed that most Scottish voters supported same-sex marriage, with about two-thirds of Scots in favour.

So it is expected to pass, and not as an isolated phonomenon:

he measures are expected to be passed by Holyrood next year before similar but weaker measures in England and Wales, to allow same-sex marriages in registry offices, are put before Westminster.

Church-led opposition continues but BBC reports:

Scotland could become the first part of the UK to introduce gay marriage after the SNP government announced plans to make the change.

Ministers confirmed they would bring forward a bill on the issue, indicating the earliest ceremonies could take place by the start of 2015.

'Anglo Saxon'? [Updated]

Yes, it was racially provocative. The Mitt Romney campaign offered his "Anglo Saxon heritage" as the basis for a better foreign policy relationship with Great Britain.

Specifically, John Swaine of the London Daily Telegraph wrote:

In remarks that may prompt accusations of racial insensitivity, one suggested that Mr Romney was better placed to understand the depth of ties between the two countries than Mr Obama, whose father was from Africa.

“We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he feels that the special relationship is special,” the adviser said of Mr Romney, adding: “The White House didn’t fully appreciate the shared history we have”.

Cornell Law School's Eduardo Peñalver, whose duties include a course on Catholic social thought and the law, responded derisively for the Catholic magazine Commonweal:

Shorter Mitt Romney advisor to the British press: He’s white ya’ll. He’s white ya’ll. He’s whitily white white white ya’ll.

As for Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, Irish Catholics, Scottish Presbyterians, African American Baptists, Jews and other citizens who aren't specifically Anglo Saxon, it may comfort some of us to know the reference is silly and outdated. Going back to the London Daily Telegraph, Tim Stanley writes:

There are two problems with the "Anglo-Saxon" bomb. First, the extent of the division between our nations is up for debate. Yes, Obama took the Churchill bust out of the Oval Office and hasn’t been super supportive during Britain’s spat with Argentina. But David Cameron’s last visit to the White House was a veritable love-in (“Get a room, guys”), and Obama’s popularity in the UK is undiminished. Many Brits love him because they see him as an antidote to the misdirected machismo of the Bush years. Few of us are keen to revive an alliance that led to the bloody mess of Iraq and Afghanistan.

More importantly, the adviser has a terrible way with words. The emphasis upon the “Anglo-Saxon” identity of the Atlantic alliance is out of date. Both countries are more multicultural than ever before, and both have forged alliances with countries that are decidedly un-Anglo-Saxon: the US is part of a trading bloc with Mexico and the UK is trapped in the engine room of the EU Titanic.

Update

Predictably, the Romney campaign is most obliquely denying the whole thing. Andrea Saul, Romney's press secretary said:

"It's not true. If anyone said that, they weren't reflecting the views of Governor Romney or anyone inside the campaign," she told CBSNews.com in an email. Saul did not comment on what specifically was not true.

The Daily Telegraph is standing by the story and "has not received a request from the Romney campaign to retract or correct the story." Although MoveOn.org would like Romney to apologize.

Update II

Romney has disavowed the staff claim. ABC News reported:

Team Romney distanced itself from the quote and, in an interview with NBC News' Brian Williams. Romney did some damage control as well: "I can tell you that we have a very special relationship between the United States and Great Britain. It goes back to our very beginnings-- cultural and-- and-- historical. But I also believe the president understands that. So I-- I don't agree with whoever that advisor might be."

No to licensing exemption for church child day care

One Indiana child drowned in a baptismal font at a church daycare cited for 18 violations when inspected in November 2011. But, Christianity Today reports, "Indiana is one of 13 states that exempt faith-based childcare providers from licensing."

The price of regulatory neglect in lives is paid elsewhere as well:

In Missouri, 41 children died in unlicensed daycares between 2007 and 2010. Lawmakers focused on improving safety but rolled back rules for religious daycares in 2009 because of church-state concerns.

That was a mistake and should be reversed, applying appropriate regulation:

Licensing has not been an issue in other states, advocates say. For example, California requires it; yet Michael Stewart, director of the Central Coast Baptist Association, says this has not affected the religious identity of his association's daycares. "Accountability is a good thing [when] dealing with kids who can't talk or defend themselves," he said. "Safety is not a religious issue."

Holding Bishop Finn to account

Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., will go on trial September 24 for charges of failing to report suspected child abuse.

The alleged failure to report involves Fr. Shawn Ratigan, who is charged with possession of child pornography.

The Kansas City Star reported:

Authorities arrested Ratigan in May 2011, five months after officials and staff at the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph found hundreds of lewd images of young girls on a laptop computer that the priest had sent for servicing.

In the ensuing furor of how church officials handled the discovery, authorities charged Bishop Robert Finn and the diocese in Jackson County each with a misdemeanor count of failure to report suspicions of child abuse. A trial on those counts is scheduled for September.

That is how church officials should be held to account for such failures: In open court.

Exporting homophobia wholesale [Updated]

Homophobia is being sold abroad by the evangelical Christian right, concludes Boston-based Political Research Associates. It is being sold by the American Center for Law and Justice, Human Life International and Family Watch International, reports the Guardian:

Each of these "frame their agendas as authentically African, in an effort to brand human rights advocacy as a new colonialism bent on destroying cultural traditions and values", the report says.

In the past five years, the report alleges, all "have launched or expanded their work in Africa dedicated to promoting their Christian right worldview". A loose network of rightwing charismatic Christians called the transformation movement joins them in fanning the flames of the culture wars over homosexuality and abortion by backing prominent African campaigners and political leaders."

Read the entire story here.

Update

Download the full report here [.pdf]. It begins:

Uganda’s infamous 2009 Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which would institute the death penalty for a new and surreal category of offenses dubbed “aggravated homosexuality,” captured international headlines for months. The human rights community and the Obama administration responded forcefully, the bill was tabled, and the story largely receded from U.S. headlines. But as the Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma reveals in this important exposé, the “Uganda problem” is continental in scale and its underlying cause continues unabated: the U.S. Christian Right, which engineered Uganda’s so-called “Kill the Gays” bill, continues to open new fronts across the African continent in its distinctly American culture war against homosexuality and abortion.

After three decades

In Australia, a victim has come forward over an apparent cover-up by the Catholic Church over a self-confessed paedophile known as Father F.

Lynn gets three to six years

Catholic Monsignor William Lynn "was sentenced on Tuesday to three to six years in prison" for covering up sex abuse, often by transferring predatory priests to unsuspecting parishes, where they continued their predation:

Judge M. Teresa Sarmina told Lynn, 61, the former secretary of the clergy for the Philadelphia Archdiocese, that he protected "monsters in clerical garb who molested children.

Lynn is the highest ranking church official thus far "found criminally liable for child-sex crimes by a priest."

It sets an example by holding an administrator responsible for his involvement. Specifically, the "just following orders" defense was rejected:

Key to Lynn's conviction on June 22, according to the jury foreman, was the monsignor's own testimony that he followed the cardinal's orders to attribute priest's moves to health reasons but never to sex abuse accusations. Testimony also showed Bevilacqua ordered the list of accused priests be destroyed, although a lone copy was found in an archdiocese safe.

Tuesday's sentence sent a message that should be underline for churches of every faith. As the New York Times reported:

“I think this is going to send a very strong signal to every bishop and everybody who worked for a bishop that if they don’t do the right thing, they may go to jail,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. “They can’t just say ‘the bishop made me do it.’ That’s not going to be an excuse that holds up in court.”