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Egypt court rules against religious slogans

Editor - Religion News — Sun, 26 May 2013 00:13:24 +0000

Violence and fear travel swiftly, and faster still in the era of tweets and status updates and 24-hour rolling news. Just after 2 pm on May 22, police answered a call to an incident in Woolwich, southeast London. A 25-year-old soldier, Drummer Lee Rigby, leaving the local barracks, had been hit by a car and then hacked to death in front of horrified onlookers. One of his alleged killers, later identified as Michael Adebolajo, linked the attack to the British military presence in Muslim countries. …

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Egypt court rejects religious slogans in election law

Editor - Religion News — Sun, 26 May 2013 00:13:20 +0000

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Egypt top court rules against religious slogans

Editor - Religion News — Sun, 26 May 2013 00:13:13 +0000

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt‘s Supreme Constitutional Court ruled on Saturday against parts of an election law approved by the Islamist-led legislature that had lifted a long-standing ban on the use of religious slogans during campaigning.

The decision is the latest sign of tensions between the judiciary and President Mohammed Morsi and his Islamist allies. The courts have dealt Islamists several setbacks over the past two years, including the dissolution of parliament‘s lower house last year. That ruling was also issued by the Supreme Constitutional Court, which had judged the law governing its election invalid.

In its decision on Saturday, the court said that not explicitly banning religious slogans in campaigns runs counter to national unity and principles of citizenship. It said religious slogans may distract voters from focusing on the candidate’s platform.

The bill will be sent back to the Shura Council, or upper house of parliament, for review. The council has temporarily assumed legislative powers in the absence of a lower house of parliament.

It was the second rebuff for the interim parliament’s electoral law. The first came in March when a court ruled that the Shura Council had improperly passed the law without allowing the country’s Supreme Constitutional Court to review it to ensure it conforms with the constitution. That decision annulled Morsi’s decree to begin elections in April.

The Supreme Constitutional Court similarly ruled Saturday against a provision of the law that requires media outlets to give equal time to candidates, saying this violates freedom of the press.

The court also said the bill breaches the principles of separation of powers because it allows the president to set election dates and change them. Morsi had said recently elections could be held in October.

The back and forth over the law is the latest example of the power tussle between the judiciary and Morsi and his allies.

Another row is centered on a controversial law that would drop retirement age for judges from 70 to 60. This would affect nearly a quarter of the country’s 13,000 judges and prosecution officials, most of them in senior positions, including in Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court.

Muslim Brotherhood lawmakers backed by other Islamists in the Shura Council pushed ahead with plans to debate the judicial reform law Saturday.

The move by the president’s party and others prompted the country’s top council of judges to suspend participation in a government-backed conference earlier this month. Morsi had sponsored the conference, which was meant to allow judges the chance to draft proposals on how reform the judiciary.

Morsi’s allies say Egypt’s judiciary is filled with supporters of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, who have worked to undermine the transition to democracy and the Islamists’ rise to power.

Many judges agree in principle on the need for reform, but don’t want the presidency or the legislature to carry it out. They say Morsi has tried to interfere in their affairs and curb their independence.

On Saturday, opposition lawmakers wore black sashes during the Shura Council session that read: “Illegitimate procedure. Illegitimate law.”

The handful of opposition members in the Shura Council shouted “illegitimate” as the speaker of the interim parliament, Ahmed Fahmy, said the law will be debated in principle by the body’s Legislative Committee. Fahmy is also a Brotherhood party member.

Dozens of protesters outside the building were led by opposition figure Hamdeen Sabahi, who placed third in the country’s nationwide presidential elections last year. They accused the Shura Council itself of being illegitimate, recalling the fact that only 7 percent of the electorate voted for the body, which traditionally does not legislate. Morsi appoints a third of the council’s members.

“This law is a clear attack on the judiciary and it’s against the constitution,” Sabahi told The Associated Press. “There’s no one logical or wise reason in the nation’s interest to insist on passing this law with such hastiness or even discussing it in the Shura Council.”

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Is the Vatican Bank finally fighting money laundering for real?

Editor - Religion News — Sat, 25 May 2013 16:13:07 +0000

The Holy See’s new financial watchdog just announced six incidents of possible monetary malfeasance from last year

Rene Bruelhart, the head of the Vatican‘s new Financial Intelligence Authority, disclosed Wednesday that he had found six incidents of possible money laundering in the Vatican Bank from last year — marking the first step in what may be a new era of transparency for the scandal-stained institution.

The Vatican Bank, officially called the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), manages an estimated $5 billion in assets for religious orders and Catholic charities. A private entity, its inner workings have long been shrouded in secrecy. In 2012, following investigations of money laundering and probes into the behavior of the top brass, Forbes called the IOR “the most secret bank in the world.”

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The bank was founded in 1942 to safeguard and administer funds for Catholic organizations around the world, and got into trouble at the height of the Cold War, “when the Catholic Church was consumed by the threat of the Soviet Union,” said TIME in a 2010 story about another Vatican probe. “In a sharply divided world, the Holy See found itself on the same side as the Mafia, whose Sicilian vote-buying operations propped up the Christian Democrats against the communists.”

Then, in 1982, when Italy’s second largest bank, Banco Ambrosiano, went bankrupt (allegedly due to mafia-related debt issues), the IOR was implicated as the bank’s main shareholder. When Banco Ambrosiano’s chairman, Roberto Calvi, was found hanging from London’s Blackfriar’s Bridge, his pockets stuffed with bricks and cash — a likely mafia murder that remains untried — the IOR’s reputation took a beating. “The Vatican has been trying to shed its image as a murky financial center since,” says the Financial Times.

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But reforms were slow moving until late 2010, when Italian authorities seized $30 million from the Vatican Bank and placed the bank’s president and chief executive under investigation for alleged violation of anti-money-laundering rules. Pope Benedict XVI established the Financial Intelligence Authority to help bring the bank up to international standards for preventing money laundering and terrorism financing. In September 2012, the Vatican hired Liechtenstein’s former top anti-money-laundering expert, the experienced and rather dashing Rene Bruelhart, to whip the Vatican Bank into shape.

Bruelhart’s announcement Wednesday that his agency found six suspicious transactions — two of which were serious enough to pass to the Vatican’s prosecutor — represents something of a new leaf for the institution.

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“There is a lot of internal support on this and it is very clear that [the Vatican] will be committed to pursue the initiated path,” Bruelhart said, adding that the bank’s challenges “are several and require perseverance.”

Bruelhart has yet to publicly offer more details on the six incidents in question, though he did say that his team would come up with new laws and screening procedures to prevent future bad behavior.

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Court to hear case on whether Obamacare violates religious liberties

Editor - Religion News — Sat, 25 May 2013 16:13:02 +0000

A federal appeals court in Denver is set to hear argument on Thursday in a lawsuit charging that the Obama administration’s requirement that employers provide contraceptive services in all mandated health plans violates religious liberty.

The full 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals has scheduled an hour-long argument session to allow lawyers for the family-owned Hobby Lobby Stores to argue their case that the contraception mandate violates sincerely held religious beliefs of the company owners.

The owners, the Green family, are evangelical Christians. The company already provides their 13,000 employees with health-care coverage, but it does not include certain kinds of birth control methods that are offensive to the Green’s religious beliefs. They particularly object to the provision of the so-called morning after pill, which they believe can be abortion-inducing.

The case is one of 59 lawsuits challenging the contraception mandate that are pending across the county, and one of a handful to reach the appellate level. Legal analysts expect potential future appeals to arrive at the US Supreme Court later this year.

Specifically at issue is whether the courts should issue a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of President Obama’s health-care reform law pending a full airing of the underlying religious liberty issue.

Appeals courts have split on the question, with three granting an injunction and three others refusing to block the new law.

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The legal dispute is developing into a major confrontation pitting the scope of an individual’s ability to practice religious freedom against the Obama administration’s power to order employers to facilitate reproductive freedom for their female employees.

Government lawyers defend the health-care regulations, saying that they do not violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act or constitutional guarantees of freedom to follow one’s religion without government interference.

In briefs to the appeals court, they said the decision whether to use certain government-required health-care services was a decision to be made by the employee, not the employer.

Government lawyers also argued that any burden of providing contraceptive services is a burden to the company, not to its owners. They said that profit-making companies like Hobby Lobby Stores do not enjoy religious liberty protections under the First Amendment.

Those protections cover nonprofit religious organizations, government lawyers said, not for-profit, secular companies.

“[The company owners] cannot circumvent this distinction by asserting that the contraceptive-coverage requirement is a substantial burden on the [owners’] personal exercise of religion,” the government’s brief to the appeals court said.

“The mandate does not compel the [owners] as individuals to do anything,” the brief said. The lawyers said that it is Hobby Lobby that is the employer and Hobby Lobby that sponsors the group health plan.

Any subsequent decision to purchase a contraceptive service belongs to the employee, the government said, and any resulting clash with the owners’ religious beliefs is only a “slight burden” of religious practice, the brief said.

Lawyers for the Green family disagree.

“This case asks whether religious business owners forfeit their faith as a cost of doing business,” lawyers with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty wrote in their brief on behalf of the Green family and Hobby Lobby Stores.

They said the contraception mandate would force the Green family and their company to offer insurance that “entangles them and their business in the practice of abortion.”

If the family refuses to comply, they and their company will face substantial financial penalties.

“When government threatens to ruin a family’s business unless they renounce their faith, the pressure placed on them is unmistakable,” the Becket Fund lawyers wrote.

“By any means of law and common sense, the Greens and Hobby Lobby are severely burdened by the government’s draconian regulation, and they may seek redress under our Constitution and laws,” the lawyers said.

Hobby Lobby is an arts and crafts retail company with more than 500 stores in 40 states. The Green family also owns Mardel, Inc., which runs 35 Christian-themed book stores employing 372 workers. The bookstore business is also a plaintiff in the suit.

The case is Hobby Lobby Stores v. Sebelius (12-6294).

Pope, Salvador president, discuss beatification of slain archbishop

Editor - Religion News — Sat, 25 May 2013 16:12:58 +0000

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The president of El Salvador met Pope Francis on Thursday to urge his fellow Latin American to put Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered by a right-wing death squad in 1980, on the road to Roman Catholic sainthood.

The sainthood process for Romero was effectively stalled under former popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI because they saw him as too close to Liberation Theology, a radical movement which emphasized helping the poor and opposing injustice.

President Mauricio Funes said before leaving for Rome the main purpose of his visit was to appeal to the pope to move forward with Romero’s beatification, the penultimate step before sainthood.

Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador, was shot dead on March 24, 1980, as he celebrated mass in a hospital chapel. He had often denounced repression and poverty in his weekly homilies.

The murder was one of the most shocking of the long conflict between a series of U.S.-backed governments and leftist rebels in which thousands of people were killed by right-wing and military death squads.

No one was ever brought to justice for the murder although former army major Roberto D’Aubisson, who died in 1992, is generally believed to have been behind it.

Previous right-wing Salvadorean governments frowned on the possibility that Romero, an icon for Latin American liberation movements, could become a saint. But the leftist Funes made a state apology for the assassination on the 30th anniversary in 2010.

On Thursday, Funes gave Pope Francis an ornate reliquary holding a piece of the vestment Romero was wearing when he was shot. The reliquary, with the fragment of the blood-stained garment, read: “Oscar Romero, spiritual guide of Salvador”.

A Vatican statement said the pope and Funes spoke at length about Romero and “the importance of his witness for the entire nation”.

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the main postulator, or promoter, of Romero’s sainthood cause and an expert on his life, said last month that Pope Francis had told him he had decided to unblock the process.

The civil war, one of the Cold War’s most brutal conflicts, claimed some 75,000 lives before it ended with a peace agreement in 1992.

Times have changed in both El Salvador and the Vatican.

Funes and other members of the government are leftists with origins in the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), which fought the military during the war. His election in 2009 ended two decades of rule by the right-wing ARENA party.

For his part Francis, the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina, is an outspoken defender of the poor and is known to be an admirer of Romero.

Roman Catholic sainthood requires that two miracles be attributed to those who are being made saints – one before beatification and another before canonization.

A miracle is usually the inexplicable healing of a sick person who prayed to a holy person who has died to interceded with God for a cure.

But if the Vatican declares Romero a martyr, the requirement for the first miracle would be waived because he would have been killed “in hatred of the faith”.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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With youth pounding at kingdom’s gates, Saudi Arabia begins religious police reform

Editor - Religion News — Sat, 25 May 2013 08:15:35 +0000

You may have heard about the case last month of three young men from the United Arab Emirates deported from Saudi Arabia for being “too handsome.”

The kingdom’s religious police, the Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice, made that call.

Known to most Saudis simply as the Hai’a, or “the commission”, its employees, called “Hai’a men,” patrol Saudi streets, shopping malls, and other public spaces in their short white robes, untrimmed beards, and traditional Saudi headdresses to ensure that businesses close five times a day during prayer time, that women do not drive or mingle with unrelated men, and to enforce a host of other religious edicts that characterize Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi Islam.

As 89-year-old Saudi King Abdullah celebrates his eighth year on the throne (according to the Islamic calendar), one of his most challenging tasks is to reform and modernize the Hai’a.

Like other countries in the region, Saudi Arabia’s bulging youth population is pounding at the gates, concerned about jobs, education, and housing. Two-thirds of the kingdom’s subjects are under 29, and they are more willing to challenge authority than the generations before them. In recent years, there have been an increasing number of confrontations between Hai’a men and Saudi youth. A number of physical assaults and fatalities attributed to Hai’a men, widely publicized on Twitter and Facebook, have inflamed public opinion.

Shortly after Arab Spring revolutions overthrew several neighboring governments, King Abdullah decided that, along with a $130 billion stimulus package, he would appoint a new head to reform the Hai’a and improve its public image.

He chose Sheikh Abdul Latif bin Abdel Aziz Al al-Sheikh, a direct descendant of the 18th century theologian who founded Wahhabi Islam and established its alliance with the House of Saud.

REFOCUSING

Sheikh Abdul Latif was an unusual choice. Though other members of the Al al-Sheikh family occupy many of the kingdom’s top religious posts, he is considered to be a liberal. He has been active in the campaign to end child marriages. His wife works in the health ministry, his sister is dean of the women’s section at Riyadh’s King Saud University and his daughter goes to university, unusual roles for female Wahhabi aristocrats.

Relative Sheikh Abdel Aziz ibn Abdullah Al al-Sheikh, the kingdom’s grand mufti and highest religious authority, is more typical. He has stated that girls are ready to marry by age 10, and that all churches on the Arabian peninsula should be destroyed.

Sheikh Abdul Latif holds the rank of cabinet minister and reports directly to the king. His agency employs more than 4,000 “field officers” and is said to have another 10,000 administrative personnel. His 2013 budget is $390 million, an increase of $35 million from 2012. The task of bringing change to the police force is likely to be formidable: His reform-minded predecessor lasted less than three years.

Since taking office, Sheikh Abdul Latif has identified five areas the religious police should focus on: preserving Islam, preventing blackmail, combating sorcery, fighting human trafficking, and ensuring that no one disobeys the country’s rulers.

One of his first moves was to announce that community volunteers could no longer join Hai’a men on their rounds. Volunteers used to join Hai’a officials as they pursued, chastised, and interrogated miscreants, considering it a religious duty.

He has also encouraged his stern and sometimes menacing field officers to “approach people with a smile.” Hai’a men may no longer use their private e-mails, cellphones, or social media accounts to receive and act on anonymous tips. He also created a “Human Rights Division” within the police force to respond to complaints, with a link on the Hai’a website to an online incident form. The link does not appear to work.

He affirmed that one of the police force’s most important functions remains rooting out sorcerers. A white phone on the Hai’a homepage links to 41 hotlines dedicated to reporting black magic. Saudis are serious about this, as numerous beheadings prove.

The website lists dozens of tip lines in each province, has online forms for the public to report un-Islamic behavior, and uses Facebook. It also used Twitter until last week, when Sheikh Abdul Latif declared that anyone using Twitter “has lost this world and the afterlife,” the latest in a series of attacks by Saudi government officials on the social networking site. Hai’a webmasters are still removing Twitter’s blue bird logo from the website.

ENTRENCHED SUPPORT

Despite these initiatives, it’s not clear that Sheikh Abdul Latif controls his notoriously recalcitrant agency. Last spring he banned Hai’a men from conducting high-speed car chases in pursuit of violators, long a sore point with the Saudi public. But several months later, Hai’a men caused the death of a young father and badly injured his wife and children doing just that.

One problem is the Hai’a does not have a procedural manual. In fact, Saudi Arabia has no written penal code. Saudi judges interpret broad principles of Islamic law as they see fit.

The Hai’a acts similarly, but goes a step further. Hai’a men often invoke the Islamic legal concept of sadd al-dhara’i, “blocking the means to evil.” According to this novel view, not only can Hai’a men intervene to stop un-Islamic behavior, they can stop acceptable behavior that might lead to un-Islamic behavior. Hence, men can be “too handsome.”

An incident last year illustrates the pushback Hai’a men now get from Saudi youth. Hai’a men told a young woman to leave a Riyadh mall because she was wearing nail polish. She scolded them, and uploaded a video of the incident to YouTube that garnered almost 3 million views.

But judging from the thousands of “likes” and dislikes” on the video, public sentiment ran more than 3-to-1 against her. Many Saudis thought she was at fault.

Author and former freelancer for the Monitor Caryle Murphy, who published a book earlier thia year on Saudi youth, was surprised at how many young Saudis she met – even those educated in th West – who defended the Hai’a‘s mission.

“If it’s gone, that means the country is Westernized, so we should keep it,” one Saudi studying in the US told her. “But they should be nice to people.”

The Saudi king showers the Hai’a with resources while seeking to rein it in. He is expanding the Hai’a’s staff, building expensive new “guidance centers,” and purchasing fleets of new GMC SUVs for the Hai’a men. But in January, the Saudi cabinet ruled that Hai’a men may no longer interrogate suspects or determine the charges against them. They may still arrest people, though, for offenses like practicing witchcraft and consuming alcohol, and they continue to enforce the ban public entertainment, women driving, and other religious rulings.

If women are ever permitted to drive in Saudi Arabia, an avalanche of new religious rulings for the Hai’a to enforce will almost certainly accompany the move. Already, King Abdullah’s 2012 decision to allow women to work in retail shops has increased the Hai’a’s workload. New regulations require all women working in stores to wear the niqab, or face veil, and shops must erect a 5.25 foot partition separating male and female employees.

Partly to address all these new demands, Sheikh Abdul Latif has announced that for the first time in its history, the Hai’a will begin recruiting women – a move that is sure to be interesting in an agency devoted to gender segregation.

*Louise Lief, the former deputy director of the International Reporting Project, is a writer in Washington.

Christian Brothers reach deal in US abuse claims

Editor - Religion News — Sat, 25 May 2013 08:14:01 +0000

NEW YORK (AP) — The Christian Brothers have agreed to pay more than $16 million to people who were molested as children by members of the U.S. religious order.

The settlement was announced Thursday by attorneys for the Roman Catholic group and for more than 400 victims.

The Christian Brothers staffed schools and worked in dioceses in parts of the United States, including California, Hawaii, Illinois, New York and New Jersey, as well as in Canada.

Two groups that hold Christian Brothers’ assets sought federal bankruptcy protection in the face of the claims. A judge must approve the agreement.

A Christian Brothers leader calls the concessions painful but necessary to protect children. Attorney Jeff Anderson says victims are seeking an independent audit of personnel records to make public any other records of abuse.

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Catholic order to pay $16.5 million to more than 400 claiming sex abuse

Editor - Religion News — Sat, 25 May 2013 08:13:46 +0000

(Reuters) – A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck Northern California on Thursday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The epicenter of the quake was 6 miles northwest of the town of Greenville, and near the smaller community of Canyondam, the USGS said. There were no immediate reports of injuries. Allen Shephard, a hunting and fishing guide at Quail Lodge at Lake Almanor in Canyondam, said the quake knocked him “right off the couch and onto the floor.” The floor of the lodge was littered with broken dishware, and cabinets were in disarray, said Shephard, 62. …

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Church of England unveils plan for women bishops in 2015

Editor - Religion News — Sat, 25 May 2013 00:12:37 +0000

By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

(Reuters) – The Church of England published a plan on Friday to approve the ordination of women bishops by 2015, a widely supported reform it just missed passing last November after two decades of divisive debate.

It said the new plan, outlined in a document signed by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Archbishop of York John Sentamu, would be presented to the General Synod, the Church legislature, in July to begin the approval process.

The proposal would make allowances for traditionalists who oppose women clergy, a minority that blocked the reform at the last Synod meeting, but each diocese will have to have a bishop willing to ordain women to the priesthood, it said.

The issue pits reformers, keen to project a more modern and egalitarian image of the church as it struggles with falling congregations in many increasingly secular countries, against a minority of conservatives who see the change as contradicting the Bible.

“We are perhaps at a moment when the only way forward is one which makes it difficult for anyone to claim outright victory,” said Bishop Nigel Stock, chairman of the working group drawing up new proposals after the reform’s defeat last November.

“The Church of England should retain its defining characteristic of being a broad Church, capable of accommodating a wide range of theological conviction,” he said in a statement.

The mother church to the world’s 80 million Anglicans was thrown into turmoil when the reform won 73 percent support but failed because it fell four votes short in the House of Laity.

Legislation needs a two-thirds majority in the Synod’s houses of bishops, clergy and laity to pass. Because of the legislative process, Synod members had said it would take five years before the reform could come up for another vote.

“WILFULLY BLIND”

“It seems as if we are willfully blind to some of the trends and priorities of … wider society,” outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said at the time.

A Sunday Times survey in March showed 80 percent of those polled favored allowing women to become bishops and almost 50 percent thought the Church was wrong to oppose British government plans to legalize same-sex marriage.

The Church approved the ordination of women priests in 1992, but delayed making them bishops because of opposition within its previously all-male clergy. Bishops play a key role in many Christian churches where only they can ordain new clergy.

Women already serve as Anglican bishops in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, but Anglican churches in many developing countries oppose any female clergy and are working together to shield themselves against such reforms.

Several Protestant denominations allow women clergy, including bishops, but the largest Christian churches – the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox – do not. The Church of England decided to allow celibate gay bishops in January, earning stinging criticism from traditionalist African Anglican leaders.

The new plan would allow conservative bishops to continue in office while opposing women’s ordination, but said “there should no longer be any dioceses where none of the serving bishops ordains women as priests.”

It also suggested that future appointments might be influenced by a bishop’s views on women clergy, saying that “many dioceses will want to insist that their diocesan bishop should be someone who ordains women”.

(Reporting By Tom Heneghan)

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