In Tuesday’s RNS report Vatican correspondent Stacy Meichtry writes an advance on Pope Benedict’s upcoming trip to Spain, during which the pontiff will confront growing secularism there: Barely a year has passed since Pope Benedict XVI, in a famous speech prior to his election, called his church to arms against a rising tide of moral indifference in Western culture-a phenomenon he likened to a “dictatorship of relativism.” Next week, he will travel to the front lines of that battle when he visits Valencia, Spain, to celebrate the fifth annual Meeting of Families. The country, once a European stronghold of Roman Catholic teaching, has seen the church’s influence dramatically give way in recent years. Gay marriage and abortion have been legalized. Laws on divorce, in vitro fertilization, embryonic stem cell research and euthanasia have been loosened. The changes have left local church leaders staggering and caused alarm among officials at the Vatican, including the pope himself.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has laid out a two-tier membership for Anglicans, reports National Correspondent Daniel Burke: Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, said Tuesday (June 27) that “the best way forward” for the embattled worldwide body is to adopt a communion-wide covenant and a two-tiered membership system. Churches that agree to the covenant would be “constituent” churches, while those that don’t would be “churches in association.” Williams’ proposal comes in the wake of the Episcopal Church’s General Convention, at which Episcopalians fiercely debated their church’s independence versus their obligations to the communion. It is unclear, however, whether Williams’ proposal will ease tensions among the world’s 77 million Anglicans or lead to bitter fights about church property and policy.
Jason Kane report from Fish Hoek, South Africa, on missionaries and witch doctors who are teaming up to battle AIDS: When it comes to fighting ailments from witches to the common cold, many black residents of this windswept fishing village have long trusted the medical expertise of the traditional healer Nkonjani Themba. But when AIDS descended on South Africa and the herbs of the ancestors failed, Themba and 14 other healers turned for modern medical advice to the nearby Living Hope Community Centre. The Baptist-based AIDS workers at Living Hope jumped at the chance to align with the powerful healers and, in a controversial move, designed an eight-week course for the healers to simultaneously spread the Gospel and AIDS awareness. The resulting partnership represents a marriage of convenience between evangelical and “witch doctor” that has rapidly bolstered the influence of both.
