June, 2008

The dignity and respect of the human person is the cornerstone of the U.S. bishops' new study guide on torture as a moral issue. The guide, titled "Torture: Torture Is a Moral Issue, a Catholic Study Guide," looks at church teaching as it relates to the use of torture by government authorities around the world and mixes in biblical passages that evoke Jesus' call to "love your enemies." Written by the Catholic Leadership Council within the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, the guide was written for use by discussion groups and classes in Catholic settings as well as individuals, families and others interested in studying the issue. The guide was introduced June 23 in the midst of Torture Awareness Month as designated by religious, human rights and civil liberties organizations.

The Bush administration told Congress last year of a secret plan to dramatically expand covert operations inside Iran as part of a long-running effort to destabilize the country's ruling regime, according to a report published yesterday. The plan allowed up to $400 million in covert spending for activities ranging from spying on Iran's nuclear program to supporting rebel groups opposed to the country's ruling clerics, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker magazine. While the administration has been waging a low-grade covert campaign against Iran for at least three years -- consisting mainly of cross-border raids targeting groups tied to attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq -- the new policy represents a significant expansion.

For black Americans, the road to political inclusion that has allowed Democratic candidate Barack Obama to make a serious bid for the White House has been long and difficult. After the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery in 1863, a series of laws and amendments to the U.S. constitution allowed Hiram Revels to be elected to the senate in 1870 in Mississippi as the country's first African American congressman. But only a small number of black Americans have entered the U.S. senate or become state governors since then and most of those who have found a slot on a presidential ticket had no chance of winning.

President Bush on Thursday (June 26) touted the successes of his initiative to partner faith-based and community organizations with government funds, calling it a key part of his presidency. "I truly believe the faith-based initiative is one of the most important initiatives of this administration," Bush said in a keynote speech to some 1,100 clergy, government staffers and nonprofit leaders attending a national conference sponsored by the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives. On Thursday, the White House announced that faith-based organizations won more than 3,200 grants in fiscal year 2007, totaling $2.2 billion of the $15.3 billion in grants awarded to nonprofits. The total amount of grants increased by 3.9 percent from $14.7 billion in the previous fiscal year.

This was a sleepy Navy outpost before the United States began using it to hold prisoners in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks - and it may soon become one again. It is increasingly obvious that the days of this U.S. offshore prison are numbered. The Bush administration's main rationale for holding terrorism suspects without trial vanished when the Supreme Court ruled on June 12 that they have certain legal rights. Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama have both called for the detention center to be shut. But whoever becomes the new president will have to figure out what to do with those left at Guantanamo - roughly 270 at present.

“The ‘Religious Left’ is finding its voice, so to speak,” said Nashville author Stephen Mansfield, a former pastor and self-described pro-life conservative. “There has always been a Religious Left,” he said. “That’s what Martin Luther King Jr. would have been. … But it’s never really had a strong national voice. Now it’s finding that voice in Obama.” Shaun Casey, a religious adviser for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, is one of the people who helps Obama find that voice when it comes to religion. As “Senior Adviser for Religious Affairs,” he tells Obama whom to talk to and how to talk to them.

Senator John McCain, who has had trouble courting faith-based voters, went to the mountaintop on Sunday — Billy Graham’s Blue Ridge mountaintop retreat in western North Carolina, that is — and met with the evangelist and his son the Rev. Franklin Graham for a private, 45-minute conversation. There were no endorsements after the meeting at the rustic retreat, called Little Piney Cove, and both sides portrayed it as nonpolitical — just a chance to talk over old times and pray for God’s blessing on the presidential election and the candidates.

A bipartisan coalition of elder statesmen, military and national security honchos, and religious leaders is calling on the president to return to pre-9/11 standards for the treatment of prisoners. An executive order to ban torture is essential, they say, to improve national security, shore up alliances in the war on terror, and recommit to American values. But will President Bush pay attention? For the politically savvy folks involved, it's not a strong expectation. Yet they say the stakes are too high not to move forward now and build public support and momentum. "I'm not sure the outgoing administration is going to issue an executive order," Dr. Nye adds. "But I think a new president, whether McCain or Obama, would be willing to consider it."

The bishops directly affected by immigration in the Americas are asking that the human dignity of migrants be respected. This was one of the appeals that came from a meeting of episcopal conferences held in Tijuana. Archbishop Christopher Pierre, apostolic nuncio in Mexico, recalled that during Benedict XVI's April visit to the United States, the Pope stressed the importance of the issue of migration. The Church cannot be indifferent to such facts "and must integrate them in her vision to respond to the challenges," noted Archbishop Pierre.

Experts in a panel butt heads Tuesday as they debated on how religious engagement in public policy should look in 21st century American democracy against the backdrop of a presidential race, where it’s strange not to talk about one’s faith. Panelists and moderator E.J. Dionne, Jr.,author of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith & Politics After the Religious Right, readily agreed that religion has an important place in the public square. What they disagreed on is how to integrate diverse religious identities into a common civic life.

Before the Democrats convene in Denver, the Rev. Jim Wallis plans to urge Barack Obama to go along with adding an “abortion reduction” plank to the party platform. Beyond his plans to make a personal plea to Obama, Wallis said that he pitched the idea last week to DNC Chairman Howard Dean. The Rev. Tony Campolo, who sits on the party’s platform committee, also supports the plank and plans to push it, according to Wallis. The abortion reduction plank that Wallis envisions would call for making adoption easier, supporting low-income women, and stepping up pregnancy prevention efforts.

If Christian conservatives stay on the sidelines during the fall campaign, presidential hopeful John McCain probably stays in the Senate. Christian conservatives provided much of the on-the-ground, door-to-door activity for President Bush's 2004 re-election in Ohio and in other swing states. Without them, the less organized and lower-profile McCain campaign is likely to struggle to replicate Bush's success. And so far, there's been scant sign that the Republican nominee-in-waiting is making inroads among these fervent believers.

The Iraq war funding bill that Congress is sending to the White House will extend weekly benefits for jobless Americans hurt by the tough economy and rising unemployment. The legislation, upon President Bush's signature, will give an extra 13 weeks of unemployment benefits to jobless workers who have exhausted their regular 26 weeks of benefits. Extending the benefits follows five straight months of falling payrolls and an unemployment rate that jumped half a percentage point to 5.5 percent in May, the biggest one-month increase since 1986.

A leading Catholic advocate against capital punishment commended the U.S. Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling June 25 barring the death penalty for anyone convicted of raping a child. The decision said the death penalty was reserved for murder and crimes against the state such as treason, espionage and terrorism. Although the opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana did not deny the pain and suffering inflicted in childhood rape, the court found the death penalty was not a "proportionate penalty for the crime" and thus amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment" in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

The Honduran cardinal who is president of Caritas Internationalis says walls are not the solution for immigration issues, and that the real answer lies in helping poor countries. Later, the cardinal spoke with Vatican Radio about the challenges facing Latin America, including emigration. He affirmed that "the solution does not lie in building walls, but instead in helping poor countries." The cardinal addressed other "thorny problems and issues" in Latin America and, in particular, Honduras, "such as the increase in the number of poor, due, above all, to the increase of the price of petrol and of basic goods." Some 70% of Honduras' 7 million inhabitants live below the poverty line.

With more families on the cusp of having nowhere to live, thousands of both former homeowners and renters are winding up in shelters or turning to charities for food or other aid to get by. Nearly 61% of local and state homeless coalitions say they've seen a rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to a study released in April by the National Coalition for the Homeless. Those facing homelessness include the working poor, who were among those hardest hit by the collapse in subprime mortgages. But others are middle-class families who scarcely expected to find themselves unable to afford their homes.

While the nation's immigration cops have raided job sites and picked up illegal immigrants across the country in the past year, hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants sit in jails, already convicted of crimes. Yet they often are released back into the community instead of being deported. This week in Congress, Democrats -- with almost no resistance from Republicans -- are trying to force the Bush administration to focus more on the criminals and less on workers, directing $800 million to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to make deportations of criminal immigrants its top priority.

Anybody who thought faith and the values voters wouldn't play a big role in the next presidential election might be having second thoughts by now. Yet while it's clearly a force, religion appears to be a more complicated variable than it was when evangelicals and other conservative Christians lined up behind George W. Bush in 2000 and even more solidly in 2004. A new survey of the American religious landscape by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life may help explain why. Undogmatic but serious about their faith, religiously inclined Americans are even more diverse and unpredictable than conventional wisdom suggests—and not only across different religious traditions. "Even within religious groups," says political scientist John Green, a senior fellow in religion and politics at Pew, "there are differences of opinion on the issues.

The Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference has called on the international community to work with leaders in the region to resolve the political crisis in Zimbabwe. In the statement, the bishops called for "a consensus model of government that involves all Zimbabweans" to be established by the international community in cooperation with the Southern African Development Community. While the conference "passionately supports" the "legitimate aspiration" of Zimbabweans to choose their president in a fair election, "the politically motivated violence, intimidation and torture have made a just and fair runoff presidential election virtually impossible," the bishops said.

California on Thursday took a major step forward on its global warming fight by unveiling an ambitious plan for clean cars, renewable energy and stringent caps on big polluting industries. The plan, which aims to reduce pollutants by 10 percent from current levels by 2020 while driving investment in new energy technologies that will benefit the state's economy, is the most comprehensive yet by any U.S. state. It could serve as a blueprint not only for the rest of the United States, but also for other big polluting nations like China and India.

According to U.S. groups who advocate for the cause of refugees, thousands of Iraqis eligible to immigrate have not yet reached this country. They remain either stranded in Iraq, vulnerable to retaliation from anti-U.S. groups, or elsewhere in the Middle East, waiting out the long and cumbersome approval process. State Department officials said the delays have stemmed in part from overburdened consular offices in Iraq and nearby countries, and in part from the bottlenecks caused by a need for exhaustive background checks by the Department of Homeland Security, especially for immigrants and refugees from Middle Eastern countries, in an era of heightened terrorism concerns.

A bipartisan group of 200 former government officials, retired generals and religious leaders plans to issue a statement on Wednesday calling for a presidential order to outlaw some interrogation and detention practices used by the Bush administration over the last six years. The executive order they seek would commit the government to using only interrogation methods that the United States would find acceptable if used by another country against American soldiers or civilians. It would also outlaw secret detentions, used since 2001 by the Central Intelligence Agency, and prohibit the transfer of prisoners to countries that use torture or cruel treatment.

Leaders of the G8 nations who will meet next month in Japan should commit to reducing global poverty and addressing worldwide climate change, say the presidents of each nation's Catholic bishops conferences. "Our religious and moral commitment to protect human life and promote human dignity moves us to be particularly concerned for the poorest and most vulnerable members of the human family, especially those in developing countries," the prelates wrote in a joint letter. The bishops called upon the presidents of the convening countries to "reaffirm and build upon the substantial commitments" made at summits in 2005 and 2007.

American evangelicals remain more Republican than Democratic but are not locked tightly in the embrace of either party, according to a new survey released on Monday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Both Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama and his Republican rival John McCain are competing hard for the votes of this "battleground faith" in the November election. One in four U.S. adults are evangelical. The "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey" found that 50 percent of U.S. evangelical Protestants were likely to be Republican or Republican-leaning compared to 34 percent who linked themselves to the Democratic Party.

Christians should not label politics as the realm where corruption flourishes, but should engage in politics as an instrument for building up a society worthy of man, said a Vatican official. "Politics is a serious issue for Christians," he said, because it is "an essential place and fundamental instrument to build a society worthy of man." Cardinal Martino acknowledged that there are two extremes that should be avoided: that of considering politics as a cure-all and that of rejecting them wholeheartedly as a negative reality. Christians, he said, are called to establish a "balanced relationship with politics."