Congress Makes Church & State Violators Richer

House Votes to Limit Church-State Awards

from Religion News Service

WASHINGTON - Passage of a House bill that would limit financial rewards in church-state legal battles has been met with cheers and jeers as the controversial measure heads to the Senate.

The Public Expression of Religion Act, passed in a 244-173 vote on Tuesday (Sept. 26), would prohibit plaintiffs in church-state cases from recouping lawyer fees for challenging public expressions of faith.

Concerned Women for America, a conservative activist group, applauded the bill's passage. "If this bill is voted on by the Senate and signed into law, citizens will have the confidence to pursue lawsuits in cases where their religious liberties have been violated," said Lanier Swann, CWA's director of government relations.

Swann cited several cases where the ACLU and others have gone to court over church-state separation issues, including attempts to block displays of the Ten Commandments, denying the Boy Scouts meeting space on public property and the attempts to strike the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Other organizations, however, criticized the House's approval.

"This bill is an underhanded attempt to strip Americans of the protections guaranteed by the Constitution," People For the American Way President Ralph G. Neas said. "It's another example of Congress undermining the system of checks and balances laid out by our nation's founders."

Eliminating the threat of crippling financial judgments will encourage citizens to "stand up to those who would chisel religious symbols from our public buildings and wipe our religious heritage from the public square," said Matthew D. Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel.

However, Mark J. Pelavin, associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, is more concerned that this could start a "full-scale assault on fundamental freedoms."

"Removing certain constitutional rights from the full protection of the law is a slippery slope threatening the protection of all rights," Pelavin said.


Snakes on a plane.

Viva Las Jesus!

Cops: Priests Fleeced Florida Flock of Millions

from The Associated Press

DELRAY BEACH, Florida - Two Roman Catholic priests stole millions in offerings and gifts made to their parish as far back as 40 years ago, prosecutors said Thursday.

Monsignor John Skehan, who was pastor at St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church for four decades, was arrested Wednesday night on charges that he stole $8.6 million from the church, using the money to buy property and other assets, investigators said.

The 79-year-old priest was arrested at Palm Beach International Airport as he returned from Ireland and was being held on $400,000 bond on grand theft charges.

The Rev. Francis Guinan, who succeeded Skehan three years ago, has disappeared and was being sought, city police and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said. He is alleged to have stolen an unspecified amount of money to take gambling trips to Las Vegas and the Bahamas.

An anonymous tip in June 2005 led police and the church to launch the investigation.

Jihad Declared on Man-Boobs

Pectoral Muscles Targeted by Fitness Fundamentalists

from The Onion

SANA'A, YEMEN — A videotaped statement shown Monday on Yemeni television provides the most conclusive evidence yet that the Muslim bodybuilding extremist group al-Huuruugh has acquired dumbbells from an unknown source and could use them to target vulnerable, undeveloped muscle groups in their pectoral region.

"I call upon the world to stand witness as I violently and repeatedly blast these pecs, purifying and rebuilding them into a shape pleasing to Allah!" a masked, shirtless weightlifter said in the tape, over the strains of Journey's "Don't Stop Believing." "Seven! Eight! Nine! God is great, and so are my pecs, trapezius muscles, lower back, and abs! Thirteen! Fourteen! The great Satan Of Flab will soon feel the burn!"

State Department officials said the group is almost certainly a danger to themselves if they do not use better form and stretch thoroughly afterward.


Infidel.

What's German for 'Chickenshit Leashlickers'?Or Arabic for 'That's Right - You're My Bitch Now'?

Fear of Offending Islam Spurs Hot Debate in Europe

from Reuters

LONDON - Four canceled performances of a Mozart opera have reignited an anxious and heated debate in Europe over free speech, self-censorship and Islam.

By canning its production of Idomeneo, fearful of security threats because of a scene that might offend Muslims, Berlin's Deutsche Oper provoked front-page headlines across the continent and found itself fending off charges of cowardice.

The controversy centered on a scene in which King Idomeneo is shown on stage with the severed heads of Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad and the sea god Poseidon.

"Here we go again. It's like deja vu...This is exactly the kind of self-censorship I and my newspaper have been warning against," said Flemming Rose, culture editor of Denmark's Jyllands-Posten paper, which met a storm of Muslim protest after publishing satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad last year.

He said bowing to fears of a violent Muslim reaction would only worsen the problem: "You play into the hands of the radicals. You are telling them: your tactics are working. This is a victory for the radicals. It's weakening the moderate Muslims who are our allies in this battle of ideas."

Berlin security officials had warned that staging the opera Idomeneo would pose an "incalculable security risk."

The decision to cancel the production even before any protests had materialized was singled out for criticism.

"To do it in advance of any actual protest I think invokes the next protest, because the radicals in any community are aided and abetted by that," said Lisa Appignanesi, a novelist and deputy president of the writers' group PEN in England. "We don't want to end up in a situation where we don't dare to speak up. What we do not want is a society where one is constantly fearful about what the people holding the bombs or the guns might say."

The latest controversy follows a furor in the Muslim world over comments by Pope Benedict this month in which he cited a medieval emperor who associated Islam with violence. He has since distanced himself from the quotations and assured Muslims of his respect, although without directly apologizing.

The opera cancellation was just the last of a series of incidents in recent years where religious sensitivities and artistic expression have clashed.

In 2004, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered after outraging Muslims with a film accusing Islam of promoting violence against women, and a British play featuring sexual abuse and murder in a Sikh temple was canceled after protests.

Last year London's Tate Britain museum removed a sculpture by John Latham which it feared would offend Muslims and a British tour of Jerry Springer - The Opera was temporarily canceled when conservative Christian groups complained.

Such tensions are not new, although artists argue they have become more common since September 11, 2001. In 1989 British author Salman Rushdie was forced into hiding after Iran issued a fatwa calling for his death after he wrote The Satanic Verses.

"You can't be afraid of constantly watching your back in the arts," PEN's Appignanesi said. "One is in the business of provoking response. Otherwise there is no art."

Tastes Like Chicken

Super Priest Can Turn Anything into Body, Blood of Christ

from The Onion

TAOS, NM — Father Thomas Mandow appears to be a simple, mild-mannered parish priest, but his remarkable faith and surpassing holiness have bestowed him with the awesome power to transform just about anything into the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

"I can state, without indulging myself in the sin of pride, that I have been blessed with the ability to convert anything into a Communion sacrament—which must be used for good—and then be partaken of in remembrance of our Lord and Savior," said Mandow in a press conference where he displayed a transubstantiated 24-piece bucket of chicken, a 64-oz. Mountain Dew bottle, and the September 2 issue of Sports Illustrated. "Although I would not advise eating all of these items for reasons having nothing to do with their intrinsic holiness."

Mandow believes he received the dangerous gift of super-consecration after being bitten by a radioactive bishop.

That's Our Benny!

Muslim Anger over Papal Comments Grows

from The Associated Press

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Pakistan's legislature unanimously condemned Pope Benedict XVI. Lebanon's top Shiite cleric demanded an apology. And in Turkey, the ruling party likened the pontiff to Hitler and Mussolini and accused him of reviving the mentality of the Crusades.

Across the Islamic world Friday, Benedict's remarks on Islam and jihad in a speech in Germany unleashed a torrent of rage that many fear could burst into violent protests like those that followed publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

By citing an obscure Medieval text that characterizes some of the teachings of Islam's founder as "evil and inhuman," Benedict inflamed Muslim passions and aggravated fears of a new outbreak of anti-Western protests.

The last outpouring of Islamic anger at the West came in February over the prophet cartoons first published in a Danish newspaper. The drawings sparked protests — some of them deadly — in almost every Muslim nation in the world.

Some experts said the perceived provocation by the spiritual leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics could leave even deeper scars.

"The declarations from the pope are more dangerous than the cartoons, because they come from the most important Christian authority in the world — the cartoons just came from an artist," said Diaa Rashwan, an analyst in Cairo, Egypt, who studies Islamic militancy.

On Friday, Pakistan's parliament adopted a resolution condemning Benedict for making what it called "derogatory" comments about Islam, and seeking an apology. Hours later, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry summoned the Vatican's ambassador to express regret over the pope's remarks Tuesday.

Notably, the strongest denunciations came from Turkey — a moderate democracy seeking European Union membership where Benedict is scheduled to visit in November as his first trip as pope to a Muslim country.

Salih Kapusuz, deputy leader of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-rooted party, said Benedict's remarks were either "the result of pitiful ignorance" about Islam and its prophet or, worse, a deliberate distortion.

"He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world," Kapusuz told Turkish state media. "It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades."

"Benedict, the author of such unfortunate and insolent remarks, is going down in history for his words," Kapusuz added. "He is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini."

Even Turkey's staunchly pro-secular opposition party demanded the pope apologize before his visit. Another party led a demonstration outside Ankara's largest mosque, and a group of about 50 people placed a black wreath outside the Vatican's diplomatic mission.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said the pope should explain and "tell us what exactly did he mean...It can't just be left like that."

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi has tried to defuse anger, saying the pope did not intend to offend Muslim sensibilities and insisting Benedict respects Islam. In Pakistan, the Vatican envoy voiced regret at "the hurt caused to Muslims."

But Muslim leaders said outreach efforts by papal emissaries were not enough.

"We do not accept the apology through Vatican channels ... and ask him (Benedict) to offer a personal apology — not through his officials," Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon's most senior Shiite cleric, told worshippers in Beirut.

Rashwan, the analyst, feared the official condemnations could be followed by widespread popular protests. Already there had been scattered demonstrations in several Muslim countries.

"What we have right now are public reactions to the pope's comments from political and religious figures, but I'm not optimistic concerning the reaction from the general public, especially since we have no correction from the Vatican," Rashwan said.

About 2,000 Palestinians angrily protested Friday night in Gaza City. Earlier, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, of the Islamic militant group Hamas, said the pope had offended Muslims everywhere.

In Cairo, some 100 demonstrators stood outside the al-Azhar mosque chanting: "Oh Crusaders, oh cowards! Down with the pope!"

The pope quoted from a book recounting a conversation between 14th-century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and a Persian scholar on the truths of Christianity and Islam.

"The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war," Benedict said. "He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.'"

The pope did not explicitly agree with nor repudiate the comment.

In Britain, the head of the Muslim Council, a body representing 400 Muslim groups, said the emperor's views quoted by the pope were bigoted.

"One would expect a religious leader such as the pope to act and speak with responsibility and repudiate the Byzantine emperor's views in the interests of truth and harmonious relations between the followers of Islam and Catholicism," said Muhammad Abdul Bari, the council's secretary-general.

Many Muslims accused Benedict of seeking to promote Judeo-Christian dominance over Islam.

Even Iraq's often divided Shiite and Sunni Arabs found unity in their anger over the remarks, with clerics from both communities criticizing Benedict.

"The pope and Vatican proved to be Zionists and that they are far from Christianity, which does not differ from Islam. Both religions call for forgiveness, love and brotherhood," Shiite cleric Sheik Abdul-Kareem al-Ghazi said during a sermon in Iraq's second-largest city, Basra.

Few in Turkey, especially, failed to pick up on Benedict's reference to Istanbul as Constantinople — the city's name more than 500 years ago — before it was conquered by Muslim Ottoman Turks.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended the German-born pope, saying his message had been misunderstood.

"It is an invitation to dialogue between religions and the pope has explicitly urged this dialogue, which I also endorse and see as urgently necessary," she said Friday. "What Benedict XVI makes clear is a decisive and uncompromising rejection of any use of violence in the name of religion."

In the United States, a Muslim group, the Council for American-Islamic Relations, asked for a meeting with a Vatican representative and urged more efforts at improving understanding between Muslims and Catholics.

"The proper response to the pope's inaccurate and divisive remarks is for Muslims and Catholics worldwide to increase dialogue and outreach efforts aimed at building better relations between Christianity and Islam," the group said.