c. 2005 Religion News Service

Bush Defends Touting of Nominee’s Religious Background

WASHINGTON (RNS) President Bush on Wednesday (Oct. 12) defended the touting of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers’ evangelical Christian background to skeptical conservatives, saying “part of Harriet Miers’ life is her religion.”

“People are interested to know why I picked Harriet Miers,” Bush told front of reporters at the White House. “They want to know Harriet Miers’ background. They want to know as much as they possibly can before they form opinions.”

Earlier Wednesday, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson said on his nationally broadcast radio show that he has no secret inside information on Miers, but is willing to tell the U.S. Senate everything he knows.

Dobson, an evangelical Christian, raised the interest of Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., when he previously said the White House had given him information that “I probably shouldn’t know.” Specter and other senators threatened to subpoena Dobson to testify.

Specifically, Specter wants to know if Dobson was given promises that Miers would vote to overturn the Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion in exchange for supporting her nomination.

In a transcript from his radio talk show, Dobson said he was told in advance what everyone already knows _ that Miers is an evangelical Christian who shares President Bush’s judicial philosophy.

Dobson said he felt obliged not to elaborate on a private phone call with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, but Rove had “now given me permission to go public with our conversation.”

Dobson said Democrats are looking for “a detailed promise that Ms. Miers would vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade … it did not happen. Period.”

Dobson said he knew about Miers’ nomination before President Bush made it public on Oct. 3, and said he was told in confidence that Bush wanted a female nominee. He was also told that many potential conservative nominees had withdrawn their names “because the (confirmation) process has become so vicious and so vitriolic and so bitter.”

Other than that, Dobson said he has no insider information on Miers that could be useful to Specter’s committee. “I have nothing to hide and I’ll be happy to come talk to you,” Dobson said.

The Family Research Council, a conservative ally of Dobson’s organization, said the focus on Dobson was nothing more than a “highly selective inquisition.”

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Bishops Criticize Idea of Lifting Celibacy Requirement for Priests

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Proposals to allow married men into the Roman Catholic priesthood to help stem the church’s global priest shortage have come under attack at a synod of bishops advising Pope Benedict XVI.

Addressing the synod Wednesday (Oct. 12), Cardinal George Pell of Sydney, Australia, warned the worldwide assembly of more than 250 bishops to not alter the “life-giving discipline of mandatory celibacy.”

“To loosen this tradition now would be a serious error which would provoke confusion in the mission areas and would not strengthen spiritual vitality in the First World,” Pell said.

Suggestions of permitting “viri probati,” or “proven men” whose family lives exemplify church teaching, to enter the priesthood surfaced at the beginning of the three-week assembly in opening remarks by Cardinal Angelo Scola.

Scola reported that some of the synod participants favored loosening celibacy regulations to “overcome the lack of priests,” but dismissed the proposals on the basis of “profound theological motives,” which he did not iterate.

That assesment provoked a course response from Melkite Patriarch Gregiore III Laham who noted the presence of married priests in the Eastern Rite Churches, which are in full communion with Rome.

Priestly “celibacy has no theological foundation,” Laham said.

Over the course of the assembly, however, some Eastern Rite synod participants have argued that opening up the priesthood to married men creates new challenges for clergymen who must juggle their commitment to the church with obligations to family.

“We must admit that the marriage of priests, even if resolving one problem, also creates other serious problems,” said Cardinal Nasrallah Pierre Sfeir, patriarch of the Maronite church in Lebanon.

Sfeir praised priestly celibacy as “the most precious gem in the treasure of the Catholic Church,” but added that the restrictions were hard to maintain in an “eroticized environment.”

According to the Instrumentum Laboris, the synod working paper, the ratio of priests worldwide has fallen from one priest for every 1,797 Catholics in 1978 to one priest for every 2,677 Catholics in 2003.

Bishops attending the synod from the global south, where the shortage is most dire, report that many diocese have only one priest to minister to over 10,000 Catholics. As a result, many faithful are unable to regularly receive the Eucharist, the bread and wine that Catholics believe is the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

The Eucharist is the official theme of the synod, which is meeting until Oct. 23.

_ Stacy Meichtry

Anglican Priest Turned Author Accused of Using Vulgar Language

LONDON (RNS) An Anglican vicar who has become a best-selling children’s author was asked to leave a school when he used questionable language for children during a talk on creative writing.

The offending words were reportedly “fart,” “bum,” “crap” and “pee,” while the headmistress was under the impression that he was going to use the f-word when he said: “Oh, f-f-f-f-flip!”

The Rev. Graham Taylor, best known for his novel Shadowmancer, was visiting Penair School, Truro, Cornwall, as part of a nationwide tour to encourage children to read. What he said, and did not say, has been a source of controversy in the British press.

He told the Western Morning News that he had asked 120 children, ages 12 and 13, if they had read a book a month, and only three put up their hands. In his talk he said television was “crap” compared to books.

One word he did not use, as he made clear in an interview with The Guardian, was “arse,” considered a profanity by some in Britain. What he said he used was the word “ass” _ which in British English means “donkey” and is the common term for that animal in the King James Version of the Bible.

Taylor’s tour of schools covers the whole of Britain and Ireland, and ends on Nov. 14.

_ Robert Nowell

Jewish Organizations Praise $25 Million in Grants for Security

(RNS) Several Jewish organizations are lauding Congress’ passage of a Homeland Security spending bill that will, for the second year in a row, include $25 million in grants for nonprofit groups at high risk of becoming targets of terrorists.

In the wake of Sept. 11 and consequent Al-Qaida threats to Jewish targets, Jewish organizations across the country _ from community centers to houses of worship _ began beefing up their security. But the exorbitant costs of erecting physical and technical barriers prompted many Jewish officials to ask Congress for financial aid.

Led by the United Jewish Communities, the coordinating body for North American Jewish federations, the coalition included groups from the American Red Cross to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

But Jewish groups have comprised a huge portion of the constituency _ and reaped significant reward.

Of the recently announced Homeland Security grants, for example, 32 organizations in the Washington, D.C,, region applied for grants providing up to $100,000. Twenty-one of those 32 groups were Jewish organizations, receiving a total of some $1.7 million, according to Ronald Halber, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington.

For a congregation like Adas Israel, Washington’s largest conservative synagogue, the $100,000 Homeland Security grant it was recently awarded means money saved.

“Every dollar spent on security is a dollar taken away from religious services or programming or other building needs,” said Glenn Easton, the synagogue’s executive director.

Nathan Diament, director of the Orthodox Union’s Institute for Public Affairs, said that rationale formed the basis of the lobbying. “Unlike the private sector where increased security costs can be passed along to the customer,” the nonprofit world responds to new costs with either more fund-raising or budget cuts, he said.

_ Rachel Pomerance

Yom Kippur to Unite Jewish community in Flood-Ravaged Louisiana

METAIRIE, La. (RNS) When Rabbi Robert Loewy gets up before his congregation to begin Yom Kippur services Thursday morning (Oct. 13), this is what he’ll see: hundreds of people in plain metal chairs on a concrete floor; the temple’s walls gutted to expose studs and wiring; the entire contents of a major synagogue complex heaped indecorously on tables jammed against walls _ the salvaged jumble of a flooded temple snatched from above the water line.

“It looks like a garage sale’s going on,” he said.

“And it’ll look beautiful to me.”

Beautiful because his people at once-flooded Congregation Gates of Prayer _ those not still stuck in Houston or Baton Rouge _ will be assembled to pray together on the holiest day of the year, the day beginning this evening that more than any other day tells them they are Jewish.

And beautiful as a sign that the world is returning to normal.

For 10,000 to 12,000 Jewish New Orleanians, the High Holy Days follow just five weeks after Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans and pummeled the suburbs in the worst disaster in the city’s 287-year history.

The storm killed more than 1,000 people; scattered hundreds of thousands to distant states; flooded tens of thousands of homes and staggered the region’s economy.

Nothing is normal.

In the suburbs of Jefferson and St. Tammany parishes, debris from tens of thousands of flooded households lines the curbs in ragged piles. In New Orleans the piles tend to be fewer and smaller. There are fewer people to rebuild; vast neighborhoods have barely begun even the most rudimentary reclamation.

Yet community is everything.

Driving down St. Charles Avenue recently, biomedical consultant Cliff Kern noticed an exterior light on outside Temple Sinai.

“That meant the power was back on.”

He entered and saw the eternal light glowing red near the tabernacle.

“That was a seminal moment for me, for the life of the congregation. It meant we were back,” he said.

Nonetheless, no Jewish congregation is intact; each service Thursday will contain the unfamiliar faces of relief workers, soldiers, visiting state troopers and others helping New Orleans recovering from Katrina.

A quarter of the Northshore Jewish Congregation is still displaced, said Rabbi Jeff Kurtz-Lendner.

“We’re just going to be Jews together in prayer in the synagogue, as always,” said the rabbi, referring to Yom Kippur.

_ Bruce Nolan

Quote of the Day: Jeff Halpern, captain of Washington Capitals hockey team

(RNS) “I wish we didn’t have a game. But it’s too important to me, my family and the community that has supported me, not to participate. I’m not the most religious person in the world, but this is something my family has always observed.”

_ Jeff Halpern, first-year captain of the Washington Capitals, explaining his decision to sit out the NHL game against the Carolina Hurricanes to observe Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.

MO/JL END RNS