c. 2006 Religion News Service

McCarrick Says Church Could `Live With’ Civil Unions

WASHINGTON (RNS) Outgoing Cardinal Theodore McCarrick said this week (June 7) that the Catholic Church “can live with” civil unions between homosexual couples “in order to protect their right to take care of each other.”

McCarrick, 76, is retiring this summer after five years as head of the Archdiocese of Washington. Because his pulpit is located in the nation’s capital, McCarrick is often looked upon as a national spokesman for American Catholics.

During an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, McCarrick said marriage between a man and a woman is “the ideal.”

However, “if you can’t meet that ideal, if there are people who for one reason or another just cannot do that or feel they cannot do that, then in order to protect their right to take care of each other, in order to take care of their right to have visitation in a hospital or something like that, I think that you could allow, not the ideal, but you could allow for that, for a civil union,” McCarrick said.

Civil unions confer on same-sex couples many of the legal rights traditionally accorded to heterosexual couples, such as hospital visitations, child custody and the inheritance of property.

Massachusetts is the only state to allow full marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples; Vermont and Connecticut offer civil unions.

While he said he was willing to compromise on civil unions, McCarrick said he does not believe that homosexuals should be allowed to marry.

“If you begin to fool around with the whole _ the whole nature of marriage, then you’re doing something which affects the whole culture and denigrates what is so important for us,” the cardinal said.

A transcript of McCarrick’s remarks is posted on CNN’s Web site.

On Friday, McCarrick issued a statement distancing himself from his remarks, saying that he “misspoke.”

“In trying to reply to a question, I mentioned people who may need the right to take care of each other when they are grievously ill and hospitalized, but it was always in the context of the proposed legislation and in no way in favor of a lifestyle that is contrary to the teaching of the church and Scripture. … I regret any confusion my words may have caused. I just did not make myself sufficiently clear,” McCarrick said.

Brian Saint-Paul, the editor of Crisis, a conservative Catholic magazine, said McCarrick’s initial comments did not “overly surprise” him, though he could not recall another U.S. cardinal articulating any support for civil unions.

While American Catholic prelates have voiced support for limited “domestic partner” benefits for gay couples, they also warned Catholic politicians in 2003 that supporting civil unions for gay and lesbian couples would be “gravely immoral.”

McCarrick’s remarks seemed to signal a willingness to soften the church’s condemnation of civil unions.

Earlier this month, McCarrick was one of eight American cardinals who signed a letter in support of a constitutional amendment to outlaw gay marriage. That amendment died in the Senate on Wednesday, when it failed to win enough votes.

_ Daniel Burke

Religious Leaders Speak Out Against Torture

WASHINGTON (RNS) A diverse coalition of religious leaders has joined the State Department in criticizing the Pentagon for omitting a tenet of the Geneva Convention that would ban “humiliating and degrading treatment” from its new detainee policies.

An Op-Ed piece, signed by 27 leaders, is slated to appear in The New York Times on Tuesday (June 13), in response to a Los Angeles Times article that said the Pentagon would remove the Geneva Convention mandate. The Op-Ed piece expresses concern that torture could be conducted by American forces.

“We all feel that torture is dehumanizing and a terrible attack against human nature and clearly against the respect we hold for each other,” said Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the outgoing archbishop of Washington, in a Wednesday (June 7) phone conference. “It is something that we should never be part of.”

McCarrick was joined in the conference by Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism; Glen Stassen, professor of Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary; and Sayyid Syeed, national director of the Islamic Society of North America. All are part of the newly formed National Religious Campaign Against Torture.

Other signatories include Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel; “Purpose Driven Life” author Rick Warren; the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; and former President Jimmy Carter.

While the war in Iraq has come under heated criticism in the wake of the Abu Ghraib and Haditha scandals, the speakers said their Op-Ed piece is not a strict condemnation of the war itself.

“People can be for the war and against the war and believe that torture is against American values and against American interest,” Saperstein said.

The Los Angeles Times reported that military officials were concerned that the Geneva Convention mandate could prevent them from using certain interrogation techniques, and could allow al-Qaida members to withhold information from their interrogators.

The decision has not been finalized, and will not be until the Pentagon’s new guidelines are made public, the Times reported. One senior official told the newspaper, on condition of anonymity, that the directive is being rewritten to assure that captives will be treated humanely but “can still be questioned effectively.”

_ Piet Levy

Vatican Official Blasts World Cup Over Prostitution

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The World Cup soccer tournament that opened Friday (June 9) deserves a “red card” for fueling Germany’s prostitution industry, according to one Vatican official.

In an interview with Vatican Radio on Thursday, Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Care of Migrants, lashed out at the tournament for creating what some expect to be a boom in Germany’s sex trade.

“Using soccer terminology, I say that red flags should be given to this industry, to its clients and to the public authorities who host the event,” he said.

Germany, where prostitution is legal, is hosting the World Cup in several cities through July 9. Analysts expect millions of sports fans to pour into the country, attracting tens of thousands of foreign prostitutes to Germany.

According to reports in German media, numerous brothels have sprung up around the host cities to capitalize on the event’s male following.

“Women become goods for sale. The cost is even less than a ticket to a soccer game,” Marchetto said. Marchetto, who closely monitors the global sex trade, added that many of the foreign sex workers had been forced into the trade.

_ Stacy Meichtry

School District Suspends Lunchtime Visits by Pastors

BEND, Ore. (RNS) Central Oregon’s largest school district has suspended a long-standing practice of allowing youth pastors from a local evangelical church to talk to students eating lunch in school cafeterias.

Representatives of Bend’s Westside Church had been going to lunches about once a month at four middle schools and three high schools in Bend for about three years, church officials said.

They would check in on students who were part of Westside’s youth ministry program, called 180.

“We’re just there to visit with the kids and encourage them,” said Steve Stern, Westside’s youth program coordinator. “We don’t have Bible studies or anything.”

A few parents found out about the visits from their children and complained to officials at Cascade Middle School and the Bend-La Pine School District.

“For me it’s a concern because middle schoolers are so impressionable, and if the school district is going to allow one religion to be represented, they have to allow other religions to be represented, too,” said parent Judy Drake.

Bend-La Pine, with 14,675 students, isn’t the first place such conflicts have occurred. School districts in Oregon and across the country often struggle with balancing state and U.S. constitutional provisions that protect religious expression while restricting entanglement between church and state.

“They also have to deal with parents,” whose opinions on what’s appropriate for their children can vary wildly, said attorney Nancy Hungerford. Her Oregon City firm counsels districts across the state on the issue.

School officials called Westside leaders on Tuesday (June 6) and asked them to stop the visits until the district can revise its current visitor and volunteer policies to address the situation.

“There are some really tough legal questions that we have to sort through, and it will lead to a complete review of how we do this,” Bend-La Pine Superintendent Doug Nelson said.

Stern, the youth program leader, said the Foursquare Gospel church has complied with all district policies and was happy to acquiesce to the district’s suspension of the visits.

“We’re not out here to ruffle feathers,” he said. “We’re just out here to love on kids and let kids know there are people there who care for them.”

_ Matthew Preusch

Quote of the Day: Congressional candidate Keith Ellison of Minnesota

(RNS) “Perhaps it would be good for somebody who is Muslim to be in Congress, so that Muslims would feel like they are part of the body politic and that other Americans would know that we’re here to make a contribution to this country.”

_ Congressional candidate Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who, if elected, would be the first Muslim in the U.S. Congress, according to several national Muslim groups. He was quoted by The Hill newspaper.

KRE/PH END RNS