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Providence, R.I.

BACK when I was 8 or 9 and wanted to be a nun, I would often stop at church on my way home from school. The school sat across the street from two churches: St. Joseph’s, which we called the French church, and Sacred Heart, which is where my family went. Sacred Heart was built by and for Italian immigrants, an odd pale stucco building in the midst of rundown mill houses. I would enter and let my eyes adjust from the bright afternoon light to the dim interior. The smell of incense and candles burning permeated everything, and I liked to stand still for a moment and breathe it in before I dipped my hand into the holy water in the marble aspersorium. My wet fingers made the sign of the cross as I made my slow, reverential way down the worn maroon carpet to the altar.

I prayed a lot in those days. For straight A’s, which I got without God’s help. For a friend, since I was a lonely, peculiar child who had trouble making friends. For my father to come home from Cuba, where he was based with the Seabees. For a real Christmas tree, instead of the fake silver one with pompom tips my mother put up in my father’s absence.

These prayers were fervent, desperate. But when I went to church alone on those long-ago afternoons, I prayed just for the sake of comfort, for the peace it brought me. Sometimes a nun might appear in her habit and allow me to scrape the melted candle wax from the marble. I imagined, briefly, a life of devotion like that. A swishing black dress and a giant wooden crucifix swinging from my rosary beads.

That fantasy disappeared eventually, along with the ritual of churchgoing. I didn’t get the same sense of peace at Sunday Mass. For reasons I can’t remember, my family eventually stopped attending church, and I started questioning the Catholic Church’s beliefs. I dabbled a little, but nothing stuck.

So I was surprised when I was struck with a desire to go to church earlier this month. Not a Mass, but inside a church, where I might pray quietly and alone. In my adult life, I had spent a lot of time angry at God, mostly over the sudden deaths in my family — my brother at 30, my daughter at 5. This year we’d suffered another sudden loss, a favorite aunt killed in a car accident. Why on this December afternoon I felt the need to check in with God, I cannot say. Maybe a conversation with a friend who spoke about going to church when her daughter was ill, or maybe the appearance of Christmas lights and decorations around town.

Whatever the reason, I walked to a Catholic church a few blocks from my home in Providence. The afternoon was chilly. Boughs of evergreen draped across the wrought-iron gate. I climbed the steps to the front door and pulled. Locked. I walked around to the side. Then the other side. Then the back. All locked. There were other churches, I thought. Plenty of them.

I went home and got in my car and drove from church to church to church. All of them were locked. With each locked door, my need to get inside and pray grew. I felt it was imperative, that if a person needed to go to church and pray, she should be able to do that. All the things I wanted to pray about washed over me. I wanted to explain to God why I’d been so angry. I wanted to apologize for things I’d done wrong. I wanted to put in a good word for my son, and for my daughter, and for my mother’s health, and for a dozen other things. But six, then seven churches were locked.

When I told my husband, he looked confused. I was not a religious person, after all. “It’s expensive to keep them open,” he, the churchgoer in our family, explained. “But what about truly desperate people?” I insisted. “It’s probably not safe to keep them open like that,” he said. Then he added, “Maybe in bigger cities?”

The next day, I was in New York City. The weather had turned as warm as spring, and after a lunch in Midtown I decided to take a walk. The mild temperature made me forget that it was Christmastime, and I was surprised to see a line of people in front of Saks Fifth Avenue waiting to see its window displays. I joined them. Then I crossed the street to stare up at the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center and smile at the white angels blowing their trumpets in front of it.

As I turned to walk to the subway, a sign caught my eye: ST. PATRICK’S IS OPEN. I read it again. ST. PATRICK’S IS OPEN. Although I quickly realized the sign was there because of all the scaffolding around the church, I still couldn’t help but feel that it was also there just for me.

A church that was open! I crossed the street and went inside. The grandeur of St. Patrick’s is nothing like the little stucco church of my childhood in West Warwick, R.I. And even on a Tuesday afternoon, it was crowded with tourists. But the candles flickered, and the smell of wax and incense filled me. I dipped my fingers in the holy water, and walked slowly up the long center aisle to the altar. Around me, people snapped pictures of the manger with their phones. A woman holding a baby in a Santa suit rushed past me. When I got to the front pew, I lowered the kneeler, and I knelt. I bowed my head and I prayed.

In the years since I’d done this simple act in church, I have prayed at home and in hospital waiting rooms. I have prayed for my daughter to live, for the bad news to not be true, for strength in the face of adversity. I have prayed with more desperation than a person should feel. I have prayed in vain.

This prayer, though, was different. It was a prayer from my girlhood, a prayer for peace and comfort and guidance. It was a prayer of gratitude. It was a prayer that needed to be done in church, in a place where candles flicker and statues of saints look down from on high; where sometimes, out of nowhere, the spiritually confused can still come inside and kneel and feel their words might rise up and be heard.

Ann Hood is the author, most recently,

of “The Red Thread”

and the forthcoming novel “The Obituary Writer.”

A Prayer at Christmas,
NYT,
24.12.2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/25/
opinion/a-prayer-at-christmas.html

Is Religion Above the Law?

October 17, 2011

9:00 pm

The New York Times

By STANLEY FISH

Stanley Fish on education, law and society.

The religion clause case recently argued before the Supreme Court — Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC — centers on the “ministerial exception,” the doctrine (elaborated over the last 40 years) that exempts religious associations from complying with neutral, generally applicable laws in some, but not all, circumstances.

In 2005 Cheryl Perich, a teacher in the Hosanna-Tabor Lutheran Evangelical School, returned from an extended sick leave (she had been diagnosed with narcolepsy) to find that her services were no longer wanted. She declined to resign as requested, and after a resolution satisfactory to her was not forthcoming she filed a disability discrimination suit. The church responded by terminating her as a teacher, alleging that its reason was theological, not retaliatory. The Missouri synod, the church explained, requires its adherents to resolve disputes rather than bring suit in civil court; in failing to follow this rule, Perich had transgressed a core Lutheran belief.

The church further argued that as a “commissioned minister” Perich fell under the ministerial exception even though the bulk of her time was spent teaching secular subjects. Perich (through her attorneys) replied that her duties were not primarily religious, and that the assertion of a doctrinal violation was an afterthought devised to serve as a pretext for an act of retaliation in response to her having gone to the courts in an effort to secure her rights.

So the issues are, first, was she a minister in the sense that would bring her under the exception (in which case the state could not intervene to protect her), and, second, was the doctrine the church invoked as the reason for its action truly central to its faith? (There are other issues in play but, as we shall see, two are more than enough.)

The most perspicuous example of a ministerial exception is the Catholic church’s limitation of membership in the priesthood to males. If a university were to have a rule that only men could serve as professors, it would be vulnerable to a suit brought under the anti-discrimination provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The difference (or so it has been asserted) is that there is no relationship between professorial skills and gender — a woman can perform the duties of a teacher of history or chemistry as well as a man — while the tradition of an all-male priesthood is rooted in religious doctrine. So the university would be engaged in discrimination pure and simple, whereas the church’s discrimination is a function of its belief that the all-male priesthood was initiated by Christ in his choice of the apostles.

Were the state to intervene and declare the tradition of an all-male priesthood and the doctrine underlying it unconstitutional, it would be forcing the church to conform to secular norms in violation both of the free exercise clause (the right of a religion to be governed by its own tenets would be curtailed) and the establishment clause (the state would in effect have taken over the management of the church by dictating its hiring practices). (I am rehearsing, not endorsing, these arguments.)

This clear-cut example — to which both sides in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC refer frequently — may be the only one (and it is only clear-cut because it has behind it 2,000 years of history). For the question quickly becomes one of boundaries — how far does the ministerial exception extend? To whom does it apply? Not only are there no answers to such questions, it is not obvious who is empowered to ask them.

If the ministerial exemption is to have any bite, there must be a way of distinguishing employees central to a religious association’s core activities from employees who play only a supporting role (the example always given is janitors). But if the line marking the distinction is drawn by the state, the state is setting itself up as the arbiter of ecclesiastical organization and thus falling afoul of the establishment clause. And if the line is drawn by the religious association, the religious association is being granted the power to deprive as many of its employees as it likes of the constitutional protections supposedly afforded to every citizen. It is these equally unpalatable alternatives — this Scylla and Charybdis — that the justices find themselves between in oral argument. What a mess!

It is tempting to bypass the mess by getting rid of the ministerial exception altogether and demanding that churches, synagogues and mosques obey the law just as everyone else does. But that draconian solution would imply that we get rid of the religion clause as well; for it would amount to saying that religion isn’t special, and both sides of the clause insist that it is. The free-exercise clause tells us that that religion is especially favored and the establishment clause tells us that it is especially feared (the state should avoid entanglement with that stuff). How do you honor the claims of free exercise without bumping up against the establishment clause by allowing exceptions to laws that everyone else must follow?

The difficulty is sometimes finessed by cabining free exercise in the private sphere. Free exercise, it is said, is fine as long as its scope is limited to the expression and profession of belief; but once it crosses over into actions the state has a duty to regulate, free exercise must give way to the authority of fair and neutral laws. (This is the holding of a line of cases from Reynolds v. United States [1878] to Employment Division v. Smith [1990].)

This cutting of the joint works fine for a religion that places minimal burdens on its adherents and asks only that they attend to the personal relationship between them and their God. But what about religions that expand the area of faith to include rites the faithful must celebrate and worldly actions they are expected to perform? What about religions that refuse to recognize, and even consider impious, the distinction between the private and the public spheres? Can the state step in and say, “No, you’re wrong; that practice you’re worried about isn’t really essential to your faith; give it up so that a system of laws put in place for everyone isn’t destroyed by exceptions.” Doesn’t society, Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked at oral argument, “have a right at some point to say certain conduct is unacceptable, even if religious?”

The question is, at what point? And who gets to decide when that point has been reached? Indeed there is a question even more basic (and equally unanswerable except by fiat): who gets to say whether a “certain conduct” is religious and centrally so? A resolution of the Hosanna-Tabor case, Justice Samuel Alito observes, “depends on how central a teaching of Lutheranism” the injunction against “suing in a civil tribunal” really is. Before we can decide (he continues) whether the church’s asserted reason for terminating Perich is a pretext, we must determine whether this is in fact “a central tenet of Lutheranism.” And if we decide that it isn’t, wouldn’t we be “making a judgment about the relative importance of the Catholic doctrine that only males can be ordained as priests and the Lutheran doctrine that a Lutheran should not sue the church in civil courts?” And what authorizes the Court to do that in opposition to what the churches themselves say?

The same dilemma attends the other vexed question. How, wonders Chief Justice John Roberts, “do we decide who’s covered by the ministerial exception?” By getting to “the heart of the ministerial exception,” answers Douglas Laycock, speaking for the church. But that is simply to relocate the problem in a phrase that itself demands explication. Who’s to say where the heart is? In some churches, Justice Anthony Kennedy observes, there aren’t “full time ministers at all; they’re all ministers.” So does everyone fall under the exception and can a non-hierarchical church simply declare that none of its members can seek redress for acts of discrimination because they’re all ministers? Just before the oral argument concludes, Justice Sotomayor is still awaiting clarification: “So define minister for me again?”

She will be waiting forever. There is no way out of these puzzles, and that is exactly the conclusion Justice Stephen Breyer reaches: “I just can’t see a way … of getting out of the whole thing.” Justice Alito points to the absurdity of calling in expert witnesses to determine the truth of disputed matters of religion, but, he asks, “How are we going to avoid that? I just don’t see it.” Later he concludes that “you just cannot get away from evaluating religious issues,” which is of course exactly what the courts are not supposed to be doing.

So how will the case turn out? Clearly none of the justices wishes to pronounce as a theologian. And just as clearly none of them is happy with the prospect of a ministerial exception without defined limits. Breyer gestures in the direction of a solution that avoids the hard questions. Grant the Church the core doctrine it cites and inquire into whether Perich was given adequate notice of it. If she was, she loses; if she wasn’t, she wins. But no one will be satisfied with that maneuver, which will itself raise a host of new unanswerable questions in place of the questions supposedly avoided. All these questions were explored by John Locke at length in his “Letter Concerning Toleration” (1689), and at one point Locke gives voice to a weariness we might echo today: Would that “this business of religion were left alone.” But as long as there is a religion clause, that’s not an option.

Is Religion Above the Law?, NYT, 17.10.2011,
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/is-religion-above-the-law/

On Basic Religion Test,

Many Doth Not Pass

September 28, 2010

The New York Times

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, but they are also deeply ignorant about religion.

Researchers from the independent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life phoned more than 3,400 Americans and asked them 32 questions about the Bible, Christianity and other world religions, famous religious figures and the constitutional principles governing religion in public life.

On average, people who took the survey answered half the questions incorrectly, and many flubbed even questions about their own faith.

Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, as well as two religious minorities: Jews and Mormons. The results were the same even after the researchers controlled for factors like age and racial differences.

“Even after all these other factors, including education, are taken into account, atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons still outperform all the other religious groups in our survey,” said Greg Smith, a senior researcher at Pew.

That finding might surprise some, but not Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists, an advocacy group for nonbelievers that was founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

“I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people,” Mr. Silverman said. “Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That’s how you make atheists.”

Among the topics covered in the survey were: Where was Jesus born? What is Ramadan? Whose writings inspired the Protestant Reformation? Which Biblical figure led the exodus from Egypt? What religion is the Dalai Lama? Joseph Smith? Mother Theresa? In most cases, the format was multiple choice.

The researchers said that the questionnaire was designed to represent a breadth of knowledge about religion, but was not intended to be regarded as a list of the most essential facts about the subject. Most of the questions were easy, but a few were difficult enough to discern which respondents were highly knowledgeable.

On questions about the Bible and Christianity, the groups that answered the most right were Mormons and white evangelical Protestants.

On questions about world religions, like Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism, the groups that did the best were atheists, agnostics and Jews.

One finding that may grab the attention of policy makers is that most Americans wrongly believe that anything having to do with religion is prohibited in public schools.

An overwhelming 89 percent of respondents, asked whether public school teachers are permitted to lead a class in prayer, correctly answered no.

But fewer than one of four knew that a public school teacher is permitted “to read from the Bible as an example of literature.” And only about one third knew that a public school teacher is permitted to offer a class comparing the world’s religions.

The survey’s authors concluded that there was “widespread confusion” about “the line between teaching and preaching.”

Mr. Smith said the survey appeared to be the first comprehensive effort at assessing the basic religious knowledge of Americans, so it is impossible to tell whether they are more or less informed than in the past.

The phone interviews were conducted in English and Spanish in May and June. There were not enough Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu respondents to say how those groups ranked.

Clergy members who are concerned that their congregants know little about the essentials of their own faith will no doubt be appalled by some of these findings:

¶ Fifty-three percent of Protestants could not identify Martin Luther as the man who started the Protestant Reformation.

¶ Forty-five percent of Catholics did not know that their church teaches that the consecrated bread and wine in holy communion are not merely symbols, but actually become the body and blood of Christ.

¶ Forty-three percent of Jews did not know that Maimonides, one of the foremost rabbinical authorities and philosophers, was Jewish.

The question about Maimonides was the one that the fewest people answered correctly. But 51 percent knew that Joseph Smith was Mormon, and 82 percent knew that Mother Theresa was Roman Catholic.

On Basic Religion Test, Many Doth Not Pass,
NYT,
28.9.2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/28religion.html

10 Commandments Judge

Runs for Ala. Governor Again

June 1, 2009

Filed at 2:34 p.m. ET

The New York Times

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- Alabama's Ten Commandments judge is running for governor again.

Roy Moore's campaign Web site went up Monday morning, inviting supporters to sign a pledge to help elect Moore governor.

The 62-year-old Moore scheduled a formal ''candidacy announcement'' later in the day.

Moore ran for governor in 2006, but lost.

When he was a circuit judge, Moore waged a court battle to display a homemade plaque of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom.

Later, as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, he placed a granite monument of the Ten Commandments in the lobby of the state judicial building. His refusal to remove it, in defiance of a federal judge's order, cost him his office in 2003.

----

On the Net: Judge Moore '10 For Governor:

http://www.moore2010.com

10 Commandments Judge Runs for Ala. Governor Again,
NYT,
1.6.2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/06/01/us/
AP-US-Alabama-Governors-Race.html

For Catholics,

Heaven Moves a Step Closer

February 10, 2009
The New York Times
By PAUL VITELLO

The announcement in church bulletins and on Web sites has been greeted with enthusiasm by some and wariness by others. But mainly, it has gone over the heads of a vast generation of Roman Catholics who have no idea what it means: “Bishop Announces Plenary Indulgences.”

In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago — the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife — and reminding them of the church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin.

The fact that many Catholics under 50 have never sought one, and never heard of indulgences except in high school European history (where Martin Luther denounces the selling of them in 1517 and ignites the Protestant Reformation) simply makes their reintroduction more urgent among church leaders bent on restoring fading traditions of penance in what they see as a self-satisfied world.

“Why are we bringing it back?” asked Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn, who has embraced the move. “Because there is sin in the world.”

Like the Latin Mass and meatless Fridays, the indulgence was one of the traditions decoupled from mainstream Catholic practice in the 1960s by the Second Vatican Council, the gathering of bishops that set a new tone of simplicity and informality for the church. Its revival has been viewed as part of a conservative resurgence that has brought some quiet changes and some highly controversial ones, like Pope Benedict XVI’s recent decision to lift the excommunications of four schismatic bishops who reject the council’s reforms.

The indulgence is among the less-noticed, less-disputed traditions to be restored. But with a thousand-year history and volumes of church law devoted to its intricacies, it is one of the most complicated to explain.

According to church teaching, even after sinners are absolved in the confessional and say their Our Fathers or Hail Marys as penance, they still face punishment after death, in Purgatory before they can enter heaven. In exchange for certain prayers, devotions or pilgrimages in special years, a Catholic can receive an indulgence, which reduces or erases that punishment instantly, with no formal ceremony or sacrament.

There are partial indulgences, which reduce purgatorial time by a certain number of days or years, and plenary indulgences, which eliminate all of it. You can get one for yourself, or for someone else, living or dead. You cannot buy one — the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1857 — but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day.

It has no currency in the bad place.

“It’s what?” asked Marta de Alvarado, 34, a bank cashier in Manhattan, when told that indulgences were available this year at several churches in New York City. “I just don’t know anything about it,” she said, leaving St. Patrick’s Cathedral at lunchtime. “I’m going to look into it, though.”

The return of indulgences began with Pope John Paul II, who authorized bishops to offer them in 2000 as part of the celebration of the church’s third millennium. But the offers have increased markedly under his successor, Pope Benedict, who has made plenary indulgences part of church anniversary celebrations nine times in the last three years. The current offer is tied to the yearlong celebration of St. Paul, which continues through June.

Dioceses in the United States have responded with varying degrees of enthusiasm. This year’s offer has been energetically promoted in places like Washington, Pittsburgh, Portland, Ore., and Tulsa, Okla. It appeared prominently on the Web site of the Diocese of Brooklyn, which announced that any Catholic could receive an indulgence at any of six churches on any day, or at dozens more on specific days, by fulfilling the basic requirements: going to confession, receiving holy communion, saying a prayer for the pope and achieving “complete detachment from any inclination to sin.”

But just a few miles west, in the Archdiocese of New York, indulgences are available at only one church, and the archdiocesan Web site makes no mention of them. (Cardinal Edward M. Egan “encourages all people to receive the blessings of indulgences,” said his spokesman, Joseph Zwilling, who added that he was unaware that the offer was missing from the Web site, but would soon have it posted.)

The indulgences, experts said, tend to be advertised more openly in dioceses where the bishop is more traditionalist, or in places with fewer tensions between liberal and conservative Catholics.

“In our diocese, folks are just glad for any opportunity to do something Catholic,” said Mary Woodward, director of evangelization for the Diocese of Jackson, Miss., where only 3 percent of the population is Catholic. At church recently, she said, parishioners flocked to her for information about indulgences. “What all do I have to do again to get one of those?” she said they asked.

Even some priests admit that the rules are hard to grasp.

“It’s not that easy to explain to people who have never heard of it,” said the Rev. Gilbert Martinez, pastor of St. Paul the Apostle Church in Manhattan, the designated site in the New York archdiocese for obtaining indulgences. “But it was interesting: I had a number of people come in and say, ‘Father, I haven’t been to confession in 20 years, but this’ ” — the availability of an indulgence — “ ‘made me think maybe it wasn’t too late.’ ”

Getting Catholics back into the confession booth, in fact, was one of the underlying motivations for reintroducing the indulgence. In a 2001 speech, Pope John Paul II described the newly reborn tradition as “a happy incentive” for confession.

“Confessions have been down for years and the church is very worried about it,” said the Rev. Tom Reese, a Jesuit and former editor of the weekly Catholic magazine America. In a secularized culture of pop psychology and self-help, he said, “the church wants the idea of ‘personal sin’ back in the equation. Indulgences are a way of reminding people of the importance of penance.

“The good news is we’re not selling them anymore,” he added.

To remain in good standing, Catholics are required to confess their sins at least once a year. But in a survey last year by a research group at Georgetown University, three-quarters of Catholics said they went to confession less often or not at all.

Under the rules in the “Manual of Indulgences,” published by the Vatican, confession is a prerequisite for getting an indulgence.

Among liberal Catholic theologians, the return of the indulgence seems to be more of a curiosity than a cause for alarm. “Personally, I think we’re beyond the time when indulgences mean very much,” said the Rev. Richard P. McBrien, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame who supports the ordination of women and the right of priests to marry. “It’s like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube of original thought. Most Catholics in this country, if you tell them they can get a plenary indulgence, will shrug their shoulders.”

One recent afternoon outside Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Church in Forest Hills, Queens, two church volunteers disagreed on the relevance of indulgences for modern Catholics.

Octavia Andrade, 64, a retired secretary, laughed as she recalled a time when children would race through the rosary repeatedly to get as many indulgences as they could — usually in increments of 5 or 10 years — “as if we needed them, then.”

Still, she supports their reintroduction. “Anything old coming back, I’m in favor of it,” she said. “More fervor is a good thing.”

Karen Nassauer, 61, a retired hospital social worker who meets Mrs. Andrade almost daily for Mass, said she was baffled by the return to a practice she never quite understood to begin with.

“I mean, I’m not saying it is necessarily wrong,” she said. “But I had always figured they were going to let this fade into the background, to be honest. What does it mean to get ‘time off’ in Purgatory? What is ‘five years’ in terms of eternity?”

The latest indulgence offers de-emphasize the years-in-Purgatory formulations of old in favor of a less specific accounting, with more focus on ways in which people can help themselves — and one another — come to terms with sin.

“It’s more about praying for the benefit of others, doing good deeds, acts of charity,” said the Rev. Kieran Harrington, spokesman for the Brooklyn diocese.

After Catholics, the people most expert on the topic are probably Lutherans, whose church was born from the schism over indulgences and whose leaders have met regularly with Vatican officials since the 1960s in an effort to mend their differences.

“It has been something of a mystery to us as to why now,” said the Rev. Dr. Michael Root, dean of the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia, S.C., who has participated in those meetings. The renewal of indulgences, he said, has “not advanced” the dialogue.

“Our main problem has always been the question of quantifying God’s blessing,” Dr. Root said. Lutherans believe that divine forgiveness is a given, but not something people can influence.

But for Catholic leaders, most prominently the pope, the focus in recent years has been less on what Catholics have in common with other religious groups than on what sets them apart — including the half-forgotten mystery of the indulgence.

“It faded away with a lot of things in the church,” said Bishop DiMarzio of Brooklyn. “But it was never given up. It was always there. We just want to people to return to the ideas they used to know.”

For Catholics, Heaven Moves a Step Closer,
NYT, 10.2.2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/nyregion/10indulgence.html

Texas Report Says 12 Girls

at Sect Ranch Were Married

December 24, 2008
The New York Times
By DAN FROSCH

Texas child welfare officials have concluded that a dozen under-age girls living at the ranch of a polygamist sect that was raided in April were involved in “spiritual” marriages to older men.

It also said that hundreds of children at the ranch had suffered neglect through their exposure to such improper relationships.

The findings were released Tuesday in a report by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services that focused on the sect living at the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado.

“The Yearning for Zion case is about sexual abuse of girls and children who were taught that under-age marriages are a way of life,” the report said. “It is about parents who condoned illegal under-age marriages and adults who failed to protect young girls — it has never been about religion.”

According to the report, sexual abuse of children at the ranch was common, with 12 girls, ages 12 to 15, “spiritually” married to older men. Seven of those girls had given birth to one or more children, the report found.

But a spokesman for the families at the ranch, who belong to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or F.L.D.S., rejected the report’s conclusions and questioned its authors’ motives.

The spokesman, Willie Jessop, called the report “a desperate attempt by the officials of the Family and Protective Services Department to try and justify their barbaric actions of April 3.”

Pointing out that the courts had ordered the return of the children who had been removed from the ranch, he added, “Now they are trying to put out a report and justify it, and it doesn’t hold up.” The sect broke from the mainstream Mormon Church after it rejected polygamy in 1890 and has since found itself in public legal battles over the practice.

The report, requested by the executive commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, detailed the controversial raid on the ranch.

After receiving a call alleging child abuse at the ranch from someone claiming to be a teenage sect member, the authorities raided the West Texas compound and removed 439 children. The raid drew national attention for weeks as the state grappled with placing the children in foster care, and the F.L.D.S. went to court to win their return.

Both the Texas Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals ruled that the raid had been too broad, that it was not backed by evidence of sexual abuse, and that there had been no grounds to seize the children. Ultimately, all but one of the children were returned to their parents, and the authorities have investigated whether the original report of abuse was a hoax.

Since the raid, however, 12 men living at the ranch were indicted by a grand jury in Eldorado, on charges including the sexual assault of a minor and bigamy.

The report also noted that F.L.D.S. parents had since taken court-mandated classes on “the appropriate discipline and the psychosexual development of children,” and that girls had been educated on how to identify and report sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, the child welfare agency has ended cases involving 424 children after determining the children were safe from sexual abuse and neglect. Fifteen cases remain active.

Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the state agency, said the report showed why the ranch had been raided in the first place.

“We went in there to do an abuse and neglect investigation,” he said. “We didn’t go in there to remove and put kids in foster care.”

    Texas Report Says 12 Girls at Sect Ranch Were Married,
    NYT, 24.12.2008,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/us/24abuse.html

George Docherty,

Pastor Who Influenced Pledge,

Dies at 97

December 2, 2008
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALEXANDRIA, Pa. (AP) — The Rev. George M. Docherty, who was credited with helping to push Congress to insert the phrase “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance, died on Thursday at his home in central Pennsylvania. He was 97.

His wife, Sue Docherty, announced the death, saying Mr. Docherty had been in failing health for about three years.

In 1952, Mr. Docherty, then pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, just blocks from the White House, gave a sermon saying the pledge should acknowledge God. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and was unfamiliar with the pledge until he heard it spoken by his 7-year-old son, Garth.

“I didn’t know that the Pledge of Allegiance was, and he recited it, ‘one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” ’ he recalled in an interview with The Associated Press in 2004. “I came from Scotland, where we said ‘God save our gracious queen,’ ‘God save our gracious king.’ Here was the Pledge of Allegiance, and God wasn’t in it at all.”

There was little effect from that initial sermon, but Mr. Docherty delivered it again on Feb. 7, 1954, after learning that President Dwight D. Eisenhower would be at the church.

The next day, Representative Charles G. Oakman, Republican of Michigan, introduced a bill to add the phrase “under God” to the pledge, and a companion bill was introduced in the Senate. Eisenhower signed the law on Flag Day that year.

    George Docherty, Pastor Who Influenced Pledge, Dies at 97,
    NYT, 2.12.2008,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/us/02docherty.html

Mormons Tipped Scale

in Ban on Gay Marriage

November 15, 2008
The New York Times
By JESSE McKINLEY and KIRK JOHNSON

SACRAMENTO — Less than two weeks before Election Day, the chief strategist behind a ballot measure outlawing same-sex marriage in California called an emergency meeting here.

“We’re going to lose this campaign if we don’t get more money,” the strategist, Frank Schubert, recalled telling leaders of Protect Marriage, the main group behind the ban.

The campaign issued an urgent appeal, and in a matter of days, it raised more than $5 million, including a $1 million donation from Alan C. Ashton, the grandson of a former president of the Mormon Church. The money allowed the drive to intensify a sharp-elbowed advertising campaign, and support for the measure was catapulted ahead; it ultimately won with 52 percent of the vote.

As proponents of same-sex marriage across the country planned protests on Saturday against the ban, interviews with the main forces behind the ballot measure showed how close its backers believe it came to defeat — and the extraordinary role Mormons played in helping to pass it with money, institutional support and dedicated volunteers.

“We’ve spoken out on other issues, we’ve spoken out on abortion, we’ve spoken out on those other kinds of things,” said Michael R. Otterson, the managing director of public affairs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormons are formally called, in Salt Lake City. “But we don’t get involved to the degree we did on this.”

The California measure, Proposition 8, was to many Mormons a kind of firewall to be held at all costs.

“California is a huge state, often seen as a bellwether — this was seen as a very, very important test,” Mr. Otterson said.

First approached by the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco a few weeks after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in May, the Mormons were the last major religious group to join the campaign, and the final spice in an unusual stew that included Catholics, evangelical Christians, conservative black and Latino pastors, and myriad smaller ethnic groups with strong religious ties.

Shortly after receiving the invitation from the San Francisco Archdiocese, the Mormon leadership in Salt Lake City issued a four-paragraph decree to be read to congregations, saying “the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan,” and urging members to become involved with the cause.

“And they sure did,” Mr. Schubert said.

Jeff Flint, another strategist with Protect Marriage, estimated that Mormons made up 80 percent to 90 percent of the early volunteers who walked door-to-door in election precincts.

The canvass work could be exacting and highly detailed. Many Mormon wards in California, not unlike Roman Catholic parishes, were assigned two ZIP codes to cover. Volunteers in one ward, according to training documents written by a Protect Marriage volunteer, obtained by people opposed to Proposition 8 and shown to The New York Times, had tasks ranging from “walkers,” assigned to knock on doors; to “sellers,” who would work with undecided voters later on; and to “closers,” who would get people to the polls on Election Day.

Suggested talking points were equally precise. If initial contact indicated a prospective voter believed God created marriage, the church volunteers were instructed to emphasize that Proposition 8 would restore the definition of marriage God intended.

But if a voter indicated human beings created marriage, Script B would roll instead, emphasizing that Proposition 8 was about marriage, not about attacking gay people, and about restoring into law an earlier ban struck down by the State Supreme Court in May.

“It is not our goal in this campaign to attack the homosexual lifestyle or to convince gays and lesbians that their behavior is wrong — the less we refer to homosexuality, the better,” one of the ward training documents said. “We are pro-marriage, not anti-gay.”

Leaders were also acutely conscious of not crossing the line from being a church-based volunteer effort to an actual political organization.

“No work will take place at the church, including no meeting there to hand out precinct walking assignments so as to not even give the appearance of politicking at the church,” one of the documents said.

By mid-October, most independent polls showed support for the proposition was growing, but it was still trailing. Opponents had brought on new media consultants in the face of the slipping poll numbers, but they were still effectively raising money, including $3.9 million at a star-studded fund-raiser held at the Beverly Hills home of Ron Burkle, the supermarket billionaire and longtime Democratic fund-raiser.

It was then that Mr. Schubert called his meeting in Sacramento. “I said, ‘As good as our stuff is, it can’t withstand that kind of funding,’ ” he recalled.

The response was a desperate e-mail message sent to 92,000 people who had registered at the group’s Web site declaring a “code blue” — an urgent plea for money to save traditional marriage from “cardiac arrest.” Mr. Schubert also sent an e-mail message to the three top religious members of his executive committee, representing Catholics, evangelicals and Mormons.

“I ask for your prayers that this e-mail will open the hearts and minds of the faithful to make a further sacrifice of their funds at this urgent moment so that God’s precious gift of marriage is preserved,” he wrote.

On Oct. 28, Mr. Ashton, the grandson of the former Mormon president David O. McKay, donated $1 million. Mr. Ashton, who made his fortune as co-founder of the WordPerfect Corporation, said he was following his personal beliefs and the direction of the church.

“I think it was just our realizing that we heard a number of stories about members of the church who had worked long hours and lobbied long and hard,” he said in a telephone interview from Orem, Utah.

In the end, Protect Marriage estimates, as much as half of the nearly $40 million raised on behalf of the measure was contributed by Mormons.

Even with the Mormons’ contributions and the strong support of other religious groups, Proposition 8 strategists said they had taken pains to distance themselves from what Mr. Flint called “more extreme elements” opposed to rights for gay men and lesbians.

To that end, the group that put the issue on the ballot rebuffed efforts by some groups to include a ban on domestic partnership rights, which are granted in California. Mr. Schubert cautioned his side not to stage protests and risk alienating voters when same-sex marriages began being performed in June.

“We could not have this as a battle between people of faith and the gays,” Mr. Schubert said. “That was a losing formula.”

But the “Yes” side also initially faced apathy from middle-of-the-road California voters who were largely unconcerned about same-sex marriage. The overall sense of the voters in the beginning of the campaign, Mr. Schubert said, was “Who cares? I’m not gay.”

To counter that, advertisements for the “Yes” campaign also used hypothetical consequences of same-sex marriage, painting the specter of churches’ losing tax exempt status or people “sued for personal beliefs” or objections to same-sex marriage, claims that were made with little explanation.

Another of the advertisements used video of an elementary school field trip to a teacher’s same-sex wedding in San Francisco to reinforce the idea that same-sex marriage would be taught to young children.

“We bet the campaign on education,” Mr. Schubert said.

The “Yes” campaign was denounced by opponents as dishonest and divisive, but the passage of Proposition 8 has led to second-guessing about the “No” campaign, too, as well as talk about a possible ballot measure to repeal the ban. Several legal challenges have been filed, and the question of the legality of the same-sex marriages performed from June to Election Day could also be settled in court.

For his part, Mr. Schubert said he is neither anti-gay — his sister is a lesbian — nor happy that some same-sex couples’ marriages are now in question. But, he said, he has no regrets about his campaign.

“They had a lot going for them,” Mr. Schubert said of his opponents. “And they couldn’t get it done.”

Mr. Otterson said it was too early to tell what the long-term implications might be for the church, but in any case, he added, none of that factored into the decision by church leaders to order a march into battle. “They felt there was only one way we could stand on such a fundamental moral issue, and they took that stand,” he said. “It was a matter of standing up for what the church believes is right.”

That said, the extent of the protests has taken many Mormons by surprise. On Friday, the church’s leadership took the unusual step of issuing a statement calling for “respect” and “civility” in the aftermath of the vote.

“Attacks on churches and intimidation of people of faith have no place in civil discourse over controversial issues,” the statement said. “People of faith have a democratic right to express their views in the public square without fear of reprisal.”

Mr. Ashton described the protests by same-sex marriage advocates as off-putting. “I think that shows colors,” Mr. Ashton said. “By their fruit, ye shall know them.”

Jesse McKinley reported from Sacramento,

and Kirk Johnson from Salt Lake City.

Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage, NYT, 15.11.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/us/politics/15marriage.html

Editorial

A Case of Religious Discrimination

November 12, 2008
The New York Times

Displays of the Ten Commandments have long been a lightning rod in constitutional law, and so they are again today. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a challenge to a city’s decision to allow the Ten Commandments to be placed in a public park, while refusing to allow a different religion’s display. The court should rule that that city’s decision violates the First Amendment prohibition on the establishment of religion.

Pleasant Grove City, Utah, has a city park, known as Pioneer Park, that includes various unattended displays. These include historical artifacts from the town, a Sept. 11 memorial, and a Ten Commandments monument that was given to the city by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, a national civic group.

A religious organization called Summum, which was founded in 1975 and is based in Salt Lake City, applied to install its own monument in the park. The monument it proposed would include the group’s Seven Principles of Creation (also called the Seven Aphorisms), which it believes were inscribed on tablets handed down from God to Moses on Mount Sinai.

Pleasant Grove City rejected Summum’s application. It told the group that it had a decades-old practice of only accepting displays that directly related to the city’s history, or that were donated by groups with longstanding ties to the community. But this was not a firm policy at the time. It was only later that the city adopted a written policy enshrining these criteria.

Summum sued, arguing that the rejection of its monument violated its right to free speech under the First Amendment. The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver agreed. In allowing monuments in its park, the court ruled, Pleasant Grove City had no right to discriminate on the basis of the content of those monuments. The city was free to ban all unattended displays if it wanted to. But once it decided to allow such displays, the court ruled, it had no right to permit the Ten Commandments but bar the Seven Principles of Creation.

The federal appeals court reached the right result, but regrettably, it ducked the issue at the heart of the case, which turns on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The real problem is that Pleasant Grove City elevated one religion, traditional Christianity, over another, Summum. The founders regarded this sort of religious preference as so odious that they included a specific provision in the First Amendment prohibiting it. The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has a bad record on Establishment Clause cases, which made it easier for all of the parties to treat the case as a simple speech case.

But as the American Jewish Committee, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and other groups argue in a friend-of-the-court brief, the Supreme Court should not make this mistake. It should squarely confront the religious discrimination underlying Pleasant Grove City’s rejection of Summum’s monument and make clear that the city violated the Establishment Clause.

There is no shortage of churches, synagogues and private parcels of land where the Ten Commandments could be displayed without the need to include the credos of alternative faiths. Public property like Pioneer Park must be open to all religions on an equal basis — or open to none at all.

A Case of Religious Discrimination, NYT, 12.11.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/opinion/12wed1.html

Billy Graham Would Like to Meet,

Pray With Obama

November 8, 2008
Filed at 3:01 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Billy Graham has counseled every American president since Dwight Eisenhower. But the evangelist known for his globe-trotting crusades has no plans to mentor Barack Obama, though his son did say his father would like to meet the president-elect and pray with him.

Graham turned 90 on Friday. His son, the Rev. Franklin Graham, told The Associated Press that Billy Graham's mind remains sharp even as his body continues to fail.

Billy Graham still remains engaged in the planning and direction of the ministry he founded, but his days as a pastor to presidents have faded.

''My father feels like his time and day for that is over,'' Franklin Graham said. ''But he would certainly like to meet (Obama) and pray with him.''

About 160 of Billy Graham's family and friends celebrated his birthday Friday at his home in Montreat with fried chicken, barbecue and sweet tea. His ministry had received some 100,000 greetings, including a video from President Bush.

His health contrasts starkly with his days commanding a ministry that put him behind the pulpit to speak with 215 million people in more than 185 countries and placed him in the confidence of some of the world's most powerful people.

Billy Graham's views are still respected in White House circles. Republican presidential candidate John McCain called on Graham at his mountainside home during the campaign, and Obama tried to meet him but was unable to due to the preacher's poor health.

Though never partisan in his preaching, Billy Graham is a registered Democrat.

His son expressed concern about Obama's views on abortion and gay marriage -- an issue Franklin Graham raised in a meeting with the Illinois senator -- saying that he and is father are conservatives who believe the Bible speaks clearly on those issues.

''President-elect Obama heard our position,'' said Franklin Graham, who now heads the Charlotte-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. ''And I told him that this was very difficult for us and hard for us. It's a moral issue that we just can't back down on.''

Obama favors abortion rights, and does not support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. He supports civil unions and believes states should decide their own laws about marriage.

Meanwhile, Billy Graham's health remains a concern among family and friends, who note he still struggles with the loss of his wife, Ruth, who died last year.

He was hospitalized last year for nearly two weeks after experiencing intestinal bleeding, and he has also had prostate cancer. Earlier this year, he had elective surgery to update a shunt that controls excess fluid on his brain. The shunt was first installed in 2000 and drains fluid from through a small tube, relieving excess pressure that can cause symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease.

''He could catch a cold and his life could come to an end,'' Franklin Graham said. ''At his age, any little thing could be a serious event. We realize that.''

Despite his limitations he still has one thing: a booming voice.

This weekend, that voice will once again cross borders when a message dubbed in Portuguese will be broadcast in Brazil in an effort to bring some 1 million new believers into the fold.

And privately, he has been working on a book about aging, trying to put his late-life lessons into context for those soon to follow him.

''He's always been ready to die,'' Franklin Graham said. ''But nobody's prepared him for getting old.''

Billy Graham Would Like to Meet, Pray With Obama, NYT, 8.11.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Billy-Graham.html

Francis Sayre Jr.,

National Cathedral Dean,

Dies at 93

October 12, 2008
The New York Times
By DENNIS HEVESI

The Very Rev. Francis B. Sayre Jr., who in his 27 years as dean of the National Cathedral in Washington raised his sonorous voice against McCarthyism, segregation, poverty and the Vietnam War while presiding over construction of the cathedral’s majestic Gloria in Excelsis Tower, died Oct. 3 at his home on Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts. He was 93.

The death was confirmed by Elizabeth Mullen, a spokeswoman for the Episcopal cathedral, one of the most influential religious institutions in the nation.

Dean Sayre, a lanky, elegant man whose grandfather was President Woodrow Wilson, first climbed into the pulpit of the monumental cathedral, in northwest Washington, in 1951. Soon after, and well before the United States Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, he was calling for an end to school segregation.

Discrimination was a recurring theme for Dean Sayre. In a 1957 sermon, as the civil rights movement gained momentum, he urged his parishioners to join the struggle. He invoked the Prophet Elijah’s Old Testament challenge, “How long will ye go limping between the two sides?” Then he said, “That question, chilling in its candor, probes rather painfully; and I’m afraid we’ve been doing a good bit of limping ourselves, and the testing may not be far off.”

In March 1965, Dean Sayre joined the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the voting-rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.

When Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin was railing at purported Communist influence in the country in the 1950s, Dean Sayre was not afraid to denounce him. In a 1954 sermon, he called McCarthy one of a crew of “pretended patriots” and said, “There is a devilish indecision about any society that will permit an impostor like McCarthy to caper out front while the main army stands idly by."

Francis Bowes Sayre Jr. was born in the White House on Jan. 17, 1915. He was the fourth grandchild of President Wilson and the first-born of the president’s daughter Jessie. His father was a Harvard law professor who later became an assistant secretary of state.

Francis Jr. graduated from Williams College and received his divinity degree from the Union Theological Seminary. He was a chaplain in the Navy in World War II and later had a parish in Cleveland.

Dean Sayre married Harriet Hart in 1946; she died in 2003. He is survived by two daughters, Jessie Maeck and Harriet Sayre McCord; two sons, Thomas Hart Sayre and Nevin Sayre; and eight grandchildren.

In his nearly three decades presiding over the cathedral, the cornerstone for which was laid in 1907, Dean Sayre oversaw phased construction that brought the Gothic structure, known officially as the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, to 90 percent completion. The cathedral’s 300-foot tower — with nearly 400 carved angels soaring on its four turrets and 32 balustrade pinnacles, and 73 bells inside — was completed in 1964.

Dean Sayre retired in 1978. Four years earlier, in an interview with The Washington Post, he said, “Whoever is appointed the dean of the cathedral has in his hand a marvelous instrument, and he’s a coward if he doesn’t use it.”

    Francis Sayre Jr., National Cathedral Dean, Dies at 93,
    NYT, 12.10.2008,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/us/12sayre.html

An Effort to Market the Priesthood

April 15, 2008
The New York Times
By DAVID GONZALEZ

The banners hanging in the main corridor of St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers declare, “Through Faith We Grow.” The class portraits that line that very same corridor tell the opposite tale. Half a century after the halcyon days when several hundred men at a time studied to be ordained as priests for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, only 22 are enrolled.

Even more alarming to Catholics, although six men expect to be ordained in May, none are entering the first-year theology program. While seminary officials attribute the sudden drop to extra preparatory course requirements that went into effect this year, it is nonetheless a jarring development.

“You do what you can, as well as you can, for as long as you can, and hope it works,” said Bishop Gerald Walsh, the seminary’s rector. “I’d be optimistic if we had enough clergy present for young people and willing to talk to them.”

He will have enough — and then some — on Saturday, when Pope Benedict XVI visits the seminary for a prayer service and youth rally. The pope’s mere presence will be a jolt of encouragement to the seminarians. It will also offer them and other priests and nuns the chance to mingle with 20,000 young people and plant a seed for vocations.

There will be flashy videos, with quick cuts, stirring sound tracks and fearless priests on New York streets. Goody bags will include glossy post cards of the pontiff emblazoned with the word “Willkommen!” — and the Web address nypriest.com, the seminary’s recruiting site. In coming weeks, the archdiocese will send its schools posters that announce, “The World Needs Heroes,” including one of black-suited priests crossing an intersection — looking like “Going My Way” meets “Reservoir Dogs.”

Officials of the archdiocese do not apologize for embracing Madison Avenue marketing to counter a sharp decline in vocations.

An increasingly secular and materialistic culture, reluctance among the young to accept lifelong celibacy, and anger over the church’s handling of sexual abuse scandals have all contributed to the precipitous drop, the officials say.

Vocational directors recognize that the public’s confidence has been shaken by the scandals. They have chosen, however, to focus their marketing campaign on an upbeat message.

The Rev. Luke Sweeney, director of vocations for the archdiocese — which covers the Bronx, Manhattan, Staten Island and seven counties west and north of the city — says the church must make its case if it hopes to reinvigorate a priesthood that is increasingly elderly. “How do we get the ‘cool’ factor back into the priesthood?” Father Sweeney said. “If we don’t sell the priesthood, we can’t legitimately ask a young man to consider the priesthood as a vocation.”

What the seminary lacks in numbers, it may make up for in intensity and eagerness. The seminarians speak of finding a joy and purpose that eluded them in secular careers.

“We live in a very confusing world, a world where there is a lot of evil in it, and good men need to step forward,” said Brian Graebe, a former high school teacher who is finishing his first year. “You can stick your head in the sand, or you can do something to change it. What more heroic life is there than to touch these eternal mysteries?”

St. Joseph’s Seminary — informally known as Dunwoodie, after its neighborhood — is hardly alone in its diminished fortunes. Nationally, the enrollment of seminarians in four-year theology programs has been flat for the last decade, currently numbering 3,286, said Sister Katarina Schuth, a professor at St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, part of the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. More than a quarter of those seminarians, she said, were foreign born.

“It’s a tough time for the church,” Sister Schuth said. “Dunwoodie has lost proportionately more than most. It really is a puzzle, given the huge population of New York and the boroughs.”

When St. Joseph’s opened in the late 1800s, its stone castle, topped by a gleaming cupola and perched majestically atop a hill, was described by Bishop Bernard McQuaid of Rochester as “the grandest seminary building in Christendom.” It was also, according to the Rev. Thomas J. Shelley, a Fordham University professor, one of the most progressive seminaries of its age, with an intellectual tradition to rival the best Catholic universities, until a Vatican crackdown on modernist thought a century ago led to a more orthodox approach.

Still, priests who were seminarians during the 1940s and ’50s recall a tranquil place whose daily rhythms were marked by the clanging of the bell for classes, meals and Mass. Many came from immigrant, working-class homes where the religious life was seen as a step up.

The Rev. Gerard J. DiSenso, who grew up poor in the Bronx, said the first time he had a room all to himself was when he entered the seminary in 1947.

That he was surrounded daily by more than 200 seminarians was encouraging and humbling.

“You sensed that you were not absolutely needed,” said Father DiSenso, who is now retired. “There were enough candidates that the seminary could afford to discharge people.”

He still goes to the seminary weekly to use its library, though he has little contact with the few men who are now there. “It’s like a shell of itself,” he lamented. “It’s completely different.”

Yet some changes have been for the better, he and other priests of his generation say. Unlike past years, when seminarians hardly left the grounds, today’s students come and go. They are assigned to work in parishes each summer to learn the demands they will encounter upon ordination.

And while enrollment is down, it better reflects the city’s changing demographics, in that there are more Hispanic candidates, both at the seminary and in a program aimed at cultivating high school students for the priesthood. In addition to the 22 seminarians to be ordained for the archdiocese, 14 candidates were sent to Dunwoodie by religious orders.

The biggest change, however, is in the age and backgrounds of seminarians. Decades ago, young men entered the seminary in their teens. Today, many have college degrees and have worked in business, science or even the military — experiences that can give them an added measure of empathy for their congregants.

“They have more experience in the world, more than we had,” Bishop Walsh, the rector, said. “They’re probably a little more secure in their choice.” Among the current seminarians are former teachers, engineers, executives and even a funeral director.

At 39, Ronald Perez is the oldest candidate for ordination next month. A former paralegal at a Midtown law firm, he moved to New York from Los Angeles 10 years ago to change his life. By the time he decided to become a priest, he had worked at a failed manufacturing company and a dot-com that missed the boom.

His decision to become a priest was gradual, he said, coming after years of involvement in activities at his home parish, St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He credited the talks he had with visiting seminarians for nudging him closer to the religious life. Like many other contemporary candidates for the seminary, he started studying philosophy with other prospective priests.

“The door was open, so if it was for you, go on, but if not, leave, no questions asked,” he said. “That first year was crucial. It gave me a chance to look back at my life and the world around me. Nothing I could have done as an engineer or a paralegal would give me contentment and happiness. Something was missing. I realized what it was: becoming a priest.”

The other great shift in recent decades has been a growing conservatism among seminarians, marked by an emphasis on ritual and on being set apart from the laity. In interviews, some older priests said their ministry was rooted in a deep understanding of the social and material needs of their congregants. Younger priests and seminarians emphasized the sacramental aspects of their vocation.

“Something that attracted me was the priest’s proximity to Christ at the Mass,” said Steven Markantonis, a second-year student. “He is using the same words Jesus used 2,000 years ago, when the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ.”

He said that after ordination, he expected to be “nothing more” than a parish priest tending to his congregation’s spiritual life.

“Regarding their social needs, it is a fine line,” he said. “You have to know where your job ends and another person’s job begins.”

Dean R. Hoge, a sociologist at Catholic University who has studied recently ordained priests, said there were indications that they were less collaborative with the laity. “They are more concerned about their status of being set apart,” Dr. Hoge said. “The younger ones are more concerned about moral teaching. The old guys hate to even talk about that.”

He cautioned that the American laity, now the most educated in history, want to have a bigger say in parish decisions.

Bishop Walsh, who once served as a pastor in Washington Heights, home to many struggling immigrants, said the church had to be understanding of its members and their burdens.

“Many people in the parishes I was in had jobs on Sunday that they had to do to put food on the table,” he said. “That is a religious value, too, raising a family. We can’t say, if you do not go to church 52 Sundays a year, you are failing as a Catholic.”

His seminarians, he said, should be gentle to the people in the pews. “People will never forget the priest who is nasty to them,” he said. “They could care less about who knows theology.”

However conservative the younger generation of clergy may be, Bishop Walsh said, it is increasingly committed to working with young people. For winning new recruits to the priesthood, no brochure or video can compete with the friendship and example of a parish priest.

Anthony Mizzi-Gili Jr. still remembers the priests of his childhood, men who graduated from Dunwoodie and earned his trust and admiration. After years of indecision, he ultimately followed in their footsteps and is now a third-year seminarian.

During midday Mass last week, he played the organ with gusto, as the chapel reverberated with “Sing With All the Saints in Glory.”

Afterward, he took lunch in the refectory, which was built to hold hundreds but now could fit the entire student body at a few tables. Mr. Mizzi-Gili looked around but refused to sound discouraged. “It shows vocations are still there,” he said. “Regardless of the numbers, we’re still there.”

    An Effort to Market the Priesthood, NYT, 15.4.2008,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/us/
    nationalspecial2/15seminarians.html

FACTBOX:

America's Roman Catholic population

Thu Apr 10, 2008
7:59am EDT
Reuters

(Reuters) - Once solidly Irish, Italian and Polish, the U.S. Roman Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination in the country, has become increasingly Hispanic in recent years.

Like other mainline denominations it is also losing members to competing faiths such as evangelical Protestant churches.

Following are some facts and figures about the U.S. Catholic population, which will greet Pope Benedict when he visits the United States from April 15 to 20.

- According to a recent nationwide survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 23.9 percent of the adult U.S. population identifies itself as Catholic. This tallies with estimates by the U.S. Catholic Church itself.

- Since the early 1970s the percentage of the population counting itself as Catholic has remained stable at around 25 percent. But according to Pew, no other major faith has experienced greater net losses with 31.4 percent of U.S. adults saying they were raised Catholic and about one in 10 describing themselves as former Catholics.

- In the face of these losses the Church has maintained its share of the U.S. population by winning its own converts but mostly through immigration, especially from Latin America. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says that about 39 percent of U.S. Catholics are Hispanic.

- The USCCB also says that since 1960, 71 percent of U.S. Catholic population growth has been Hispanic and that by the second decade of the 21st century, more than 50 percent of U.S. Catholics will likely be Hispanic.

- The USCCB estimates that there are 2.3 million African American Catholics. There is also a growing population of Vietnamese Catholics in areas like north Texas.

- The U.S. Northeast remains one of the centers of American Catholicism, with 29 percent of all adults there belonging to the faith.

- One indicator of the resiliency of Catholicism in any country is the Mass attendance rate among the flock. According to a 2007 survey by Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, about one fifth of U.S. Catholics attend Mass at least once a week while 11 percent go almost every week.

(Sources: Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life;

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops;

Reuters;

Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate)

(Compiled by Ed Stoddard;

Editing by Mike Conlon and Xavier Briand)

FACTBOX: America's Roman Catholic population, R, 10.4.2008,
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN09459287
20080410

Southern Baptists

Back a Shift on Climate Change

March 10, 2008
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE

Signaling a significant departure from the Southern Baptist Convention’s official stance on global warming, 44 Southern Baptist leaders have decided to back a declaration calling for more action on climate change, saying its previous position on the issue was “too timid.”

The largest denomination in the United States after the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, with more than 16 million members, is politically and theologically conservative.

Yet its current president, the Rev. Frank Page, signed the initiative, “A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change.” Two past presidents of the convention, the Rev. Jack Graham and the Rev. James Merritt, also signed.

“We believe our current denominational engagement with these issues has often been too timid, failing to produce a unified moral voice,” the church leaders wrote in their new declaration.

A 2007 resolution passed by the convention hewed to a more skeptical view of global warming.

In contrast, the new declaration, which will be released Monday, states, “Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed.”

The document also urges ministers to preach more about the environment and for all Baptists to keep an open mind about considering environmental policy.

Jonathan Merritt, the spokesman for the Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative and a seminarian at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., said the declaration was a call to Christians to return to a biblical mandate to guard the world God created.

The Southern Baptist signatories join a growing community of evangelicals pushing for more action among believers, industry and politicians. Experts on the Southern Baptist Convention noted the initiative marked the growing influence of younger leaders on the discussions in the Southern Baptist Convention.

While those younger Baptists remain committed to fight abortion, for instance, the environment is now a top priority, too.

“In no way do we intend to back away from sanctity of life,” said the Rev. Dr. Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala.

Still, many powerful Southern Baptist leaders and agencies did not sign the declaration, including the convention’s influential political arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Dr. Barrett Duke, vice president for public policy at the commission, played down the differences between the declaration and the Southern Baptist Convention’s position.

The declaration says in fact that lack of scientific unanimity should not preclude “prudent action,” which includes changing individual habits and giving “serious consideration to responsible policies that effectively address” global warming.

The declaration is the outgrowth of soul-searching by Mr. Merritt, 25. The younger Mr. Merritt said that for years he had been “an enemy of the environment.” Then, he said, he had an epiphany.

“I learned that God reveals himself through Scripture and in general through his creation, and when we destroy God’s creation, it’s similar to ripping pages from the Bible,” Mr. Merritt said.

Southern Baptists Back a Shift on Climate Change, NYT, 10.3.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/us/10baptist.html

October 27, 1955

The silence

of a wise and noble Anglican voice

From the Guardian archive

Thursday October 27, 1955
Guardian

"Billy" Temple was one of the most radical spirits to become Archbishop of Canterbury. For decades after his death, aged 63, after only two years in office, many mourned him as the lost leader of Anglicanism.

William Temple, whose death is announced, was a son of the Most Rev Frederick Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury. He had a brilliant university career, gaining a first in [Greats] ... [His] appointment to Canterbury came as near to being demanded not only by Anglicans but by the whole nation as anything could well be. His known sympathies with drastic reform, not merely in Church but also in social and economic matters, roused opposition in some quarters, and it was an open secret that efforts were made to get some other man appointed.

The following is from the leader comment: There are few Englishmen who could so ill be spared as William Temple, for there are few with his gift for leadership and his wise, bold, tolerant and generous mind. Few men have made so great mark on their age; none has done so much to draw together the spirit of the Church and the spirit of the democracy.

He was the son of an archbishop, a man, like himself, of great intellectual distinction and a courageous reformer. But those interests drew him, as they did not draw his father, into active co-operation with working men on the basis of comradeship and equality, and his whole life was influenced by that experience.

He was free from intellectual pride and could learn from the society of men whose discontents he could admire and share, lessons that stood him in good stead when he was a high dignitary of the Church.

The W.E.A. [Workers Educational Association] owed him an immense debt, but he would have been the first to acknowledge that he owed a great debt to the W.E.A.

A French thinker has said that to every man of 20 the world is a scandal, implying that as he gets older he begins to understand that it is better not to try to interfere with arrangements that look ill enough but rest on some strong basis. Temple was always a man of 20. He was never reconciled to injustice, and ... used every means to educate the Church and the nation about the problems of social and international life. His statesmanlike qualities were shown in his speeches on the war. Englishmen lament today not only the silence of a noble voice but the loss of a mind whose help would have been invaluable in unravelling the desperate problems of tomorrow.

    From the Guardian archive > October 27, 1955 >
    The silence of a wise and noble Anglican voice,
    G, 27.10.2006,
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1932788,00.html

On This Day - July 19, 1951

From The Times Archives

The Canterbury Festival is now
a more secular affair, and became
a major arts festival in 1984.
This year it begins on October 9

THE narrow streets round the cathedral are bright with streamers and flags to-day in honour of the Canterbury festival. The prettiest decorations are in Mercery Lane, which points to Christ Church Gate, the main entrance to the precincts. There baskets of flowers are slung across the road on ropes of evergreens.

It was the cathedral’s own festival — normally an annual event, though none was held last year — that opened to-day. The city’s festival will not, strictly speaking, begin till a week next Monday; but the profusion of decorations already in the streets is pleasantly suggestive of the close ties that link city and cathedral here. Their happy relationship was equally reflected in the congregation which this afternoon filled the cathedral for the introductory service of the Cathedral festival programme, which will continue for 10 days.

Besides the large representation in the choir stalls of civic and county authorities and dignitaries — the mayors of 22 Kent towns and the Barons of the Cinque Ports were among them, all in their robes — there must have been a great many Canterbury citizens in the nave. But the distinguishing feature of this occasion was the world-wide distribution of the communities which had sent delegations to the service. It was said that virtually all denominations of Christians in every part of the world, except Roman Catholics, were represented. The strongest national contingent from overseas was from the United Sates, with 26 representatives of various Churches.

    From The Times Archives > On This Day - July 19, 1951,
    The Times, 19.7.2005,
    http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.asp

May 23, 1856

Churches must not dictate

workers' leisure

From The Guardian archive

Friday May 23, 1856

Guardian

Tyranny is never less entitled to respect than when it attempts to appease its victims by sops. There is a vast display of ostentatious activity just now among the leaders of religious agitation about what is called a "boon to the working classes".

We can venture to disparage this liberal offer because the Saturday half-holiday has long been an established institution in Manchester, and its good effect on the social condition of the community well ascertained.

Londoners cannot do better than to adopt it. The hard-working population of the metropolis will only fall into error if they allow it to be supposed that the arrangement of mutual benefit to themselves and their employers is accepted by them in lieu of the personal freedom which they have an inalienable right to exercise on another day of the week.

This is the tack on which their weakness is being assailed by some benevolent friends of theirs, who never troubled themselves particularly about the cessation of Saturday labour, or the performance of Saturday music, until they became inflated with the notion of taking Sunday under their own control, and dictating their own mode of keeping it to others, who dissent entirely from their views of Sabbath observance.

We believe [many of them find it] sorely against the grain to have to raise a hand in propagation of any kind of popular amusement.

It is probable that they are tormented by a remorseful apprehension that they are making terms with the powers of evil. It is a pity that they should put themselves to so much unnecessary pain for the sake of an end which will certainly not be attained.

A little leisure time, more or less, in the week will not produce contented acquiescence in an unwarrantable interference with social liberty. For this kind of irritation there is no lenitive but justice. The working classes will even concede far too much if they exert themselves to show, as they certainly may, that they cannot make use of their free hours on Saturday afternoon exactly as they would, if they were allowed to do so, on Sunday.

The proper answer is that they claim, in the disposal of all their hours, not to be bound by the notions of religious obligation which any dominant church or party in the legislature may entertain.

It is characteristic of the arrogance with which the puritanical faction comport themselves, that they positively vaunt this early closing on Saturday as a compromise between the demands of the people and their own pretensions.

    From The Guardian archive > May 23, 1856 >
    Churches must not dictate workers' leisure, G,
    Republished 23.5.2006,
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1780826,00.html

July 3, 1852

Lord Derby looses bigotry

on the streets

From the Guardian archive

Saturday July 3, 1852

Guardian

We regret to have to record one of those disgraceful riots which exist only where the lower class Irish dwell in considerable numbers - arising out of the perpetual feuds between the Irish catholics and the lower class of English factory hands.

There has been in Stockport a bad feeling between the two classes, partly on trade quarrels, partly on national grounds, but chiefly the result of religious differences between ignorant Irish catholics on the one hand, and as ignorant English protestants on the other.

Sunday last was the anniversary of the usual procession of all Roman catholic scholars connected with the three chapels in Stockport. The recent royal proclamation against Roman catholic processions was much discussed. Party feelings amongst the lower classes ran high, the catholics boasting they would not be stopped, and the protestants declaring that their processions ought to be put down. The procession, however, did take place on Sunday afternoon, and, on the whole, passed off quietly.

The only badges or symbols that might be supposed to contravene the Proclamation, were a ball and cross, and a gilt dove. But very suddenly (on Tuesday) considerable numbers of English and Irish made their appearance, and commenced fighting with sticks and other weapons. The police were attacked; the military sent for.

A considerable number of men and youths were conveyed to the Court House. Many were severely wounded, and from four o'clock in the morning till noon, four medical men were engaged in dressing their hurts.

Comment: The riot appears the direct offspring of Lord Derby's proclamation against Roman catholic processions and costumes. We cannot think the catholics blameless in persisting in their procession. But the irretrievable disgrace belongs to the bullies and ruffians who abuse the name of Protestants.

The sacrilegious ransacking of churches, the fiendish destruction of houses and furniture, and the most cruel and cowardly murder, are memorials of protestant zeal and enlightenment alone. The affair was more like a battle than a fight. The bloodshed, the violence, and the rapine are protestant handiwork, not in self-defence, but in brutal and licentious phrenzy

Had not the tory government, by a popularity-hunting attack upon Roman catholic ceremonials, cast about to stimulate the sectarian passions of the electors, we should have been free from the shame and danger.

From the archive > July 3, 1852 >
Lord Derby looses bigotry on the streets,
G, Republished 3.7.2006,
https://www.theguardian.com/news/1852/jul/03/
mainsection.fromthearchive

November 23 1828

The Catholic question

From The Guardian archive

November 23 1828

From the Manchester Guardian

Our columns this day contain two long advertisements in reference to the Catholic question; the one from the enemies of concession; the other from those who are anxious that ministers should not be embarrassed in the adoption of those measures in respect to it, which are obviously necessary for the pacification of Ireland, and to the ultimate welfare of the empire.

The former of these documents is the fruit of those importunate appeals with which our Tory papers have teemed for many weeks past, in favour of Brunswick clubs. But it does not, we are happy to see, breathe the truculent spirit with which we have been so greatly dis gusted in the columns of our contemporaries. There are none of the almost treasonable threats of the Leeds Brunswickers; nor is it proposed so far to imitate the French at the worst periods of the revolution. All that our anti-Catholic friends have in contemplation is to relate to the legislature the story of their fears in the constitutional form of a petition — a very moderate and tolerably unobjectionable proceeding. If they really are afraid, of course they are entitled to say so, however irrational their apprehension may be. Gentlemen have as much right to make the Catholics a bug-bear, as the Yorkshireman the other day had to fancy his next door neighbour a witch. But the Catholics are as much warranted in claiming that they should not be subjected to punishment (and degradation is punishment) on account of the terrors of others, as the poor woman at Leeds was to be protected against the unaccountable fancy which inspired her prosecutor with such a penchant for pinching and bleeding her.

We must confine ourselves strictly to a few observations, suggested by the documents before us. The number of signatures to the anti-Catholic requisition (exclusive of the clergy, whom we consider as of no weight in this matter,) is we believe 506. Of these, however, there is a very large proportion whom we, with a very extensive knowledge of the inhabitants of Manchester, now hear of for the first time.

To the counter declaration, the number of names, with the residences of each attached, is 431. A considerable number, where the residences were not stated, have, we understand, been erased.

The anti-Catholic requisition contains the names of one barrister and two physicians. The counter-declaration has two barristers and 11 physicians. We might carry this principle of comparison much further, but the late hour at which we are writing absolutely compels us to pause.

We shall merely add that we see in the papers before us a triumphant, and to us most gratifying confirmation of the assertion we have repeatedly ventured to make — that amongst the wealthy, intelligent and educated portion of the community in which we live, there is a decided preponderance in favour of the settlement of Catholic claims.

From The Guardian archives >
The Catholic question, from the Manchester Guardian,
November 23 1828, The Guardian Review, p. 24, 16.4.2005.

On This Day - March 7, 1817

From The Times Archives

The sect founded by the former chambermaid
and self-proclaimed mystic, Joanna Southcott,
attracted more than 100,000 adherents.
The Times was sceptical about her prophecies
and condemned the actions of her followers

A PREACHER in a chapel in Sheffield was deputed by his congregation to wait upon one George Turner at Leeds, a high priest of that class of believers. He went to Leeds and had a conference with Turner who gave him his instructions. On his return, he called his congregation together on Thursday night, the 16th of January last; the doors were closed, and the preacher told them that he had received a command from Turner, believing it to be from God, that all the congregation and believers were to cease working on the Monday morning following. All those who had any effects were to tell them and deposit all the money they had into his hands, declaring at the same time, that George Turner had appointed him the Lord’s Treasurer.

The believers in George Turner’s mission generally struck work –— that is declined to do any thing; and our informant says, that he abstained from working, but he did not sell his furniture, though a great number of others did. Many sums of money were paid at different times and the believers lived in feasting and riot for two weeks, until the money that had been contributed was exhausted.

On the same night, __________ proclaimed from the pulpit, that he was authorised by George Turner, who had it in a command from God that on the 28th of that month there would be a violent earthquake which would swallow up all churches and chapels in England. After that the destroying angel would go through the land and smite with death in every house all persons that had ridiculed Turner’s faith.

The Times, On this day, 7.3.2005.

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