The Priest and the People

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Fred Yi

CHRISTI DEEGAN (speaking to marriage workshop): So one of the topics the church talks about is living together, cohabitating…

JUDY VALENTE, Correspondent: These young Catholic couples in Chicago are attending a marriage preparation workshop required by their church.

DEEGAN: And this is always such a hard topic to talk about, because the church teaches, you know, wait to have sex until you’re married, right?

VALENTE: Despite that teaching, half these couples may already be living together.

(speaking to Catholic couples): No guilt about your decision?

MAN: No, it never really came into play for me.

WOMAN: We’re both artists, we just don’t have—we can’t support ourselves on our own.

MAN: It’s important to get to know the person as well as you can before you get married.

WOMAN: The priest didn’t say anything bad. They didn’t ever say that we shouldn’t be living together. There was no condemnation.

VALENTE: Sex outside of marriage, divorce, homosexuality. For many Catholics, these no longer hold the stigma they once did. Catholics disagree with the church on a variety of other issues. The vast majority of Catholics say women should be priests, and according to a recent survey 58 percent said abortion should be a personal decision. The bishops keep talking about these issues, but fewer Catholics seem to be listening. What’s a pastor to say to the people in the pews?

REV. PATRICK LEE: It’s like being a parent to be a pastor. You never give up on your children, but you keep holding the ideal and explaining the ideal and hoping people will strive for it, but not condemning them when they fall short.

VALENTE: With so many Catholics going their own way these days, the role of pastor is perhaps more complicated than ever.

Rev. Patrick Lee

REV. LEE: When I was growing up, the church was the ideal we tried to change ourselves to match. Now people want to change the church.

VALENTE: Father Lee is the pastor of two parishes in Chicago. Most of his parishioners are highly educated, and they represent a diversity of views about church teaching.

REV. LEE: All authority is being questioned in our times. Some of it selfishly, some of it enlightened. I think Americans are more comfortable in an educated democracy now, and so they want to spread that democracy to the church, which has never really been a democratic organization. I think we have to be open to a dialogue of understanding what the church teaches and really hearing it and not dismissing it instantly. On the other hand, I think the church has to open itself to the wisdom of its laity.

JOE MURRAY: I’m a Eucharistic minister, and I’m a lector and an usher, when need be.

DENNIS KLUGE: I’ve been on the parish council for several years, but also I’m a lector, commentator, Eucharistic minister, and the lead bass in our church choir.

VALENTE: Joe Murray and Dennis Kluge have been a couple for 31 years. They are active members of Father Lee’s parish.

MURRAY: I understand where my pastor’s coming from, and he understands where I’m coming from, and on that topic we do not necessarily agree, but that’s okay because we respect each other.

Joe Murray and Dennis Kluge

KLUGE: I think it’s important that Joe and I just approach it as we are just two guys coming to church and we’re just here to worship like everyone else, and we get involved, people get to know us, and so we’ve never, at least personally I’ve never felt excluded.

MURRAY: Women probably have more of a reason to be angry at the church than we do, because we’re not allowed marry, but they’re not allowed to become priests. They’re told that because of their biology, that’s excluded for them.

VALENTE: As at many parishes, women in Father Lee’s congregation aren’t shy about expressing their disagreement, but they remain practicing Catholics nonetheless.

MARY ANN TRAUSCHT: I personally stay in the church because I believe the basic tenets that are taught, and what I disagree with are man-made laws, not what Jesus taught.

VALENTE: What about artificial birth control? Do you know women who’ve left over that?

KATHRYN CUNNINGHAM: Most of the women I know are doing what they need to do and not talking about it.

VALENTE: A good number of Father Lee’s parishioners are divorced and remarried. If they have not gotten their first marriage annulled, the church says they may no longer receive Communion. This is often ignored.

REV. LEE: If they want to receive Communion I explain to them why they’re asked not to receive Communion, and if they make the decision they feel they want to receive Communion, I have to honor their conscience, if their conscience is informed.

VALENTE: “Informed conscience” is something Catholics are increasingly citing as support for disregarding official teaching. It means, in essence, that one has studied church teaching, reflected on it, and concluded that the teaching can in good conscience be rejected.

(speaking to Rev. Lee): If your conscience is telling you this is not a sin, but the church’s teaching says it is a sin, and you know what the church’s teaching is, then where do you stand?

REV. LEE: If you take exception to a church teaching, you better have a pretty good reason and not just “it’s because I want to do this.”

VALENTE: Reconciliation refers to the sacrament of forgiveness that used to be known as confession. Father Lee waits in the confessional every Saturday. Some days, no one comes.

(speaking to Rev. Lee): Do people know what sin is?

REV. LEE: I think they do. I think our whole being tells us when we’re being sinful. It’s unpleasant to deal with our own brokenness, and yet for those people who are brave enough to take that step, there is such healing in that sacrament that I can’t imagine my life without it.

VALENTE (speaking to Joe Murray): In your view, is it possible to be a faithful Catholic and yet disagree very strongly with some church teaching?

MURRAY: You can be faithful, and you can dissent. Dissent is challenge, and had we had more dissent, public dissent, we may not have had to have gone through what we’re going through in terms of the clergy sexual abuse.

VALENTE (speaking to Rev. Lee): Is this new round of scandal making it more difficult for you to be a pastor?

REV. LEE: It makes me feel ashamed. It makes me look at that clerical culture of secrecy and say this is unhealthy. It needs to be blown open.

VALENTE: Recent allegations about that culture of secrecy have rekindled outrage at the institutional church. But people make a distinction between the Vatican and their own parish.

KLUGE: That’s the big church. The little church is really where my heart is, alright?

MURRAY: You have to define what church is for us. The church is our parish, so our experience of church is through the parish.

REV. LEE: I think part of it is the strength and beauty of the Catholic culture. I don’t think it’s a religion like some religions. I think it’s in your bones.

CUNNINGHAM: Women and some other people who have left the church come back to the church. Whenever they’re asked why did you come back, they say not having the Eucharist, something was missing. That brings them back. That hunger brings them back.

REV. LEE (preaching to congregation): We see the love of Jesus when he meets sinners in the gospels. He doesn’t condemn them. Instead, he invites them to come and accept healing, to come and accept forgiveness.

It’s certainly an important role to be compassionate, to draw people in from wherever they are into a closer relationship with Christ, and so you don’t achieve that by throwing up barriers and saying you can’t belong, you’re excommunicated. That strikes me as not terribly Christ-like. I’m the shepherd. I have to get the strays and keep nipping at their heels to get them back into the flock, where they’ll be safe.

For Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, this is Judy Valente in Chicago.

Cambodian Children’s Fund

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Fred Yi

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: If kids are any judge of character, Scott Neeson must be doing something right.

SOEMSO NOEUON: He is so kind. He help poor families and they can get a better life like me.

SEVERSON: Soemso Noeuon is one of about 500 kids whose lives have been made a whole lot better by the Cambodian Children’s Fund known as the CCF that Neeson founded seven years ago. It may be the best schooling in Cambodia.

SEVERSON: This is Ally Hoffman, one of Neeson’s volunteers.

ALLY HOFFFMAN: I tell Scott that I can tell who’s been here longer because it’s almost like watching something flower.

SEVERSON: Hard to imagine that some of these sweet, clean faces are the same he found at the Phnom Penh garbage dump when he first arrived here 7 years ago. There were a thousand families existing in the rubble—kids scrounging barefoot through broken glass, jagged metal, and bubbling chemical waste hoping to earn 50 cents a day from scrap. Oaoknay Houy was one of them.

OAOKNAY HOUY: When I got money I give it to my uncles and aunt. I never have money to buy anything like food to eat. Some day I don’t have food to eat.

SCOTT NEESON: It just blew me away. It just was the most appalling situation I have ever seen, just the level of suffering and tragedy down there, the level of impoverishment and lack of any kind of human dignity. It was just—I couldn’t walk away.

SEVERSON: He had been just passing through, a backpacking tourist, but within a year he had given up his very lucrative job as a president of a division of Sony Pictures, his multi-million-dollar home, his fancy cars, his yacht.

(speaking to Scott Neeson): You were a man of means.

NEESON: I was a man of means and luxuries, and yet I sort of enjoyed it but I wasn’t particularly happy.

SEVERSON: A year after he moved here, using his own money and contributions from friends, he opened a boarding school for 40 kids, many of whom had been abandoned by their parents. A couple of years later, enrollment had grown to 180. Now he has over 500 students in five schools, including a vocational school. Students here can learn crafts like sewing, design, hair styling, even baking. Several graduates have found jobs in local businesses. Patrick McKinley volunteered two years of his life at CCF.

PATRICK MCKINLEY: These kids want to do things themselves, and the price of getting it wrong for them is one they’ve already paid, and they see on the streets what’s waiting for them if they don’t get it right, so they work very hard.

SEVERSON: In the beginning it was all about education, but it wasn’t long before Neeson realized that a kid who is constantly sick or malnourished or lives in an abusive family is not going to be a good student. So CCF gradually expanded its mission to include outreach programs for the whole impoverished community that surrounds the dump.

SCOTT NEESON: She has a hole in her heart so she’s struggling to breathe, has got heart issues.

(Doctor speaking with patient): All right, look right at me, okay?

SEVERSON: Because so many people need medical care CCF built a clinic not just for the youngsters, but for their families.

NEESON: It’s possibly the only fully free medical clinic, I think, in the country that treats everyone, everything, regardless of age and disease.

SEVERSON: The doctors from Cambodia and around the world are all volunteers, like Kristin Schroeder, a pediatrician from Nebraska.

DR. KRISTIN SCHROEDER: Last year I was looking for a place to volunteer in Southeast Asia, and I wrote a letter to different nonprofit organizations, and Scott wrote me a letter back saying that, I think his exact words were, “I would crawl over broken glass to have a pediatrician come to CCF.” I can’t refuse that.

SEVERSON: The little girl getting a checkup—her name is Sien—was skin and bones a few years ago. Now she’s Neeson’s number one student, studying to become a doctor.

NEESON: I was at a wedding, and I felt something rustling at my feet under the table, and I thought it was a rat. I jumped in the air. It was Sien was under there collecting scrap food and the bottles, and that’s how we met.

CHANNOEURNH SOK (Scott Neeson’s Assistant): Scott really wants to help all the children that he sees, yes, and he hopes to help all of them. He will save the world if he can.

NEESON (with sack over his shoulder): Delivered to the door.

SEVERSON: Today he’s the delivery man, dropping off free rice to families who might earn $500 a year if they’re lucky. Here he’s handing out care packages for newborns, and for mothers who have no money to pay for a babysitter while they work CCF opened a day care school, and for those who need help with their babies, a free nursery.

NEESON: These kids are feral. They don’t have a place to stay, so we bring them in and feed them.

SEVERSON: The CCF program is filled to capacity. Neeson cannot take in any more children. But these kids are hungry, so every afternoon he opens the gates, and they stream in for a hot meal, a pair of shoes, a shirt.

NEESON (handing out clothes): Ah, made in Cambodia.

SEVERSON: Because the classrooms at CCF are all full, Neeson has opened four satellite schools in impoverished neighborhoods.

NEESON: Because of the demand, we now have three to four sessions a day in every location. We’re having one on the other side. It filled up within 48 hours. Kids just want to study.

SEVERSON: Neeson says one reason he is so preoccupied with education is because he never graduated from high school himself.

NEESON: You know, I’m not a big believer in destiny, but it does seem like this is what I was meant to do. Everything I’ve done prior to now, whether it was working in business, in corporations. I grew up in a very working class area. I didn’t finish my own education. All those things have helped this come together.

SEVERSON: This is a CCF awards ceremony. Almost every child gets an award for something. After six years, Pou Dom is CCF’s first graduate, who’s now heading off to college with Neeson’s help.

POU DOM: I want to be a manager of a hotel.

SEVERSON: A manager of a hotel?

POU DOM: Yes.

SEVERSON: Are you learning skills here?

POU DOM: Yes, my major is hospitality and tourism.

SOEMSO NOEUON: I want to be a manager, doctor, and teacher.

SEVERSON: All three?

SOEMSO NOEUON: Yeah.

SEVERSON: Jim Gianpolus is chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment. He sponsored a fundraiser for CCF.

JIM GIANOPULOS: You know, we all want to change the world, and when we approach that effort and try and implement that desire, you know, you realize that it is very difficult to change the world. But what Scott has done is change a little piece of it and completely changed it for these kids.

NEESON: The premise of CCF, the actual concept was to take these children and really make them the catalyst for change. They’ve all got potential to be community leaders.

SEVERSON: And if Neeson has his way the change will reach far beyond Cambodia.

NEESON: The model here I believe works so well, every part of it is driven by quality, whether it’s education, the vocation training, nutritional. If I can get sustainability here I’d love to try the same in other countries. But it’s a matter of finances at the moment

SEVERSON: At the awards ceremony Neeson was asked about his recent fund-raising trip to America.

NEESON: That was a tough question to answer.

SEVERSON: What did she ask?

NEESON: She asked if the US trip was a success.

SEVERSON: Was it?

NEESON: No. The finances are difficult here, and it’s become less about the work here and more about trying to ensure we have enough money to keep it all going.

SEVERSON: He says if the financial situation doesn’t improve he’s going to have to rein in some of his outreach programs, but swears that no matter what happens no kid will leave CCF without a good education, period, and that includes college.

NEESON (to student receiving award): Number one! I love that.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

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Posted on May 7, 2010 by Fred Yi

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Abraham Foxman on the Boundaries of Civility

Posted on May 3, 2010 by Fred Yi

The Anti-Defamation League is holding its annual national leadership conference in Washington, DC this week (May 2-4, 2010), and one major theme is civility. Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton spoke with ADL national director Abraham Foxman about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s appearance at the UN Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review in New York, the lack of civility in American political discourse, and ongoing Jewish concerns about the Oberammergau Passion play, which is set to begin on May 15 in Germany. The play is only performed every ten years.

Arizona Immigration Law

Posted on April 30, 2010 by Fred Yi

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: In Arizona, a tough new immigration law is prompting widespread protest from many in the religious community. It requires police in the state to check the status of anyone they suspect may be in the country illegally. To protest it many in the faith community have designated this weekend as a special time for prayer for immigrants. Among those condemning the law are the US Catholic bishops, who have long lobbied for comprehensive immigration reform.

Bishop Gerald Kicanas

We want to talk now with one bishop on the frontline of the battle. He is Gerald Kicanas, bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Tucson Arizona. Bishop, welcome. Several lawsuits were filed this week, more are promised, more are in the works, some of them from clergy. Where does the Church stand on this? Are you going to try to stop this bill, this law?

BISHOP GERALD KICANAS (Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson, Arizona): Even the Arizona legislators, Bob, are considering modifications to the bill, which suggests that they themselves are concerned about how it could be misinterpreted. So there will be legal action, certainly, and we’ll monitor that and participate where we feel it would be appropriate.

ABERNETHY: Do you think the church might become a party to the lawsuits to try to stop the bill?

BISHOP KICANAS: I don’t know that we’ll be bringing the lawsuits forward. Those will be brought forward by, certainly, others, but we will review those, and perhaps consider being a friend of the court where it would be appropriate.

ABERNETHY: Do you think in the end that the bill can be stopped, that the law can be stopped?

BISHOP KICANAS: Well, there is great national concern, certainly concern within our state among religious leaders, among many portions of our community. It has to be addressed that this bill does not well represent the state of Arizona and is not going to resolve the issues that we are facing.

ABERNETHY: Bishop, remind us again of what the church says, what Christian teachings say about the stranger.

BISHOP KICANAS: Every Christian tradition speaks of the importance of welcoming the stranger, that every human being is to be treated with dignity and respect, and so for us in the church that is a core message of our teaching—that all human life from conception till natural death is to be respected, and certainly the migrant is among those who are the littlest and weakest among us, and they need to be respected and treated with the dignity they deserve.

ABERNETHY: But as you know perhaps better than anyone, people feel so strongly about this. Many people in Arizona, they want to stop the illegal immigration, they want to get rid of some, of the people who are already there. They fear crime, they feel changes in culture. You’ve been getting a lot of calls, I’m sure. What do you say to people, many of them, I’m sure, your friends, who say, “We disagree with you on this”?

BISHOP KICANAS: Well, certainly, I first have to listen, to hear what they are feeling, their concerns, their worries, and then try to help them to see what the church is teaching, because a lot of times people haven’t really heard what is being said or haven’t read the law, and so it’s important to encourage them to learn about the situation, understand it better, and most important if they could come to meet the migrant I think some of their fears and concerns would be alleviated.

ABERNETHY: Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Arizona, many thanks.

Texas Textbook Controversy

Posted on April 30, 2010 by Fred Yi

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: Do you think that the history that we have a lot of in this country was written by liberals?

DON MCLEROY: Oh, absolutely, yes.

SEVERSON: Don McLeroy has been practicing dentistry for over 30 years, and until recently he was chairman of the Texas school board—the board that stirred up a hornet’s nest with its efforts to amend Texas history books for the state’s nearly 5 million students.

MCLEROY: Some people characterize, oh, we’re making our standards lean to the right, oh my gosh, you know. The left has dominated a lot of history.

Don McLeroy

SEVERSON: Barbara Cargill has been on the board 6 years. She teaches science to children and agrees with McLeroy on most issues.

BARBARA CARGILL: We want to take all of the content that liberal publishers might have and want to pour into the classroom, and we serve as the filter for the parents and students and the teachers to kind of make sure that what gets through is really the best information.

SEVERSON: There are 15 state school board members here in Texas—ten Republican, five Democrat. They’re elected to four-year terms, and every ten years they’re required to reevaluate and make any changes they deem necessary to Texas textbooks. But never before have there been so many changes, almost all of them from Republican members—changes that ignore many of the recommendations Texas history teachers were mandated to make and spent a year compiling.

This is Mary Helen Berlanga, a lawyer and a Democrat who has been on the school board longer than any other member.

(speaking to Mary Helen Berlanga): Have you ever had anything like this in your 27 years?

MARY HELEN BERLANGA: No, never, and I think if you look over the 300 amendments you’re going to see that it is pretty much a rewrite of the original book that was given to us.

SEVERSON: It’s difficult for outsiders and even board members to make sense of all the amendments that have been offered, but most agree they paint conservatives and conservative values in a more favorable light. They extol the virtues of free enterprise and American foreign policy and emphasize that this country was built on Christian principles.

MCLEROY: I would like to see the importance of religion to make sure that the role it played in the founding of our country and the acknowledgment of the founders’ dependence upon God that they wrote into the documents to make sure that that’s clearly presented.

CARGILL: I am the mother of two Eagle Scouts myself, so it was very important to me that a lot of the values would be upheld in the social studies curriculum, and so throughout the elementary standards you will see that our teachers are now required to teach their students about truthfulness, respect for oneself and for others, holding elected officials to their word, the duty that it is to vote, and you will see this language used over and over again starting in kindergarten and going through the 4th grade.

SEVERSON: Mary Helen Berlanga, like the other Democrats on the board, is a minority, and she argues that the contributions and treatment of minorities in Texas are “whitewashed” in the proposed standard changes.

BERLANGA: When it comes to the section on civil rights, they do not have anything that is specific to the Mexican-American experience.

Mary Helen Berlanga

SEVERSON: In Texas.

BERLANGA: In Texas. The Mexican Americans were discriminated against. They weren’t allowed in theaters to buy popcorn and their drink to watch the movie until everyone else was seated, in some parts of the state. Mexican Americans were not allowed to go into a restaurant and eat because on the outside it would say “No Mexicans allowed, no dogs, no Negroes.”

PROFESSOR FRITZ FISCHER (Chairman, National Council for History Education): It’s very disturbing. I’m very concerned for the kids in Texas, the students in Texas.

SEVERSON: Fritz Fischer is a history professor at the University of Northern Colorado and chairman of the National Council for History Education. He believes board members should not be the ones to change history.

FISCHER: Standards should be written with people who work with the kids every day, who are professionally trained to do this sort of thing, and the government shouldn’t be dictating, the political leaders shouldn’t be dictating what is taught in the classroom.

Prof. Fritz Fischer

SEVERSON: When Professor Fischer refers to the government, he’s speaking of the elected school board members. He says most boards around the country make only a few changes to those submitted by the experts. McLeroy himself added about 60 amendments.

MCLEROY: Conservatives on our board are the only ones—the Christian conservatives—that are able to sit there and to think for themselves and say, well, wait. Is this really good policy? Should we just trust what’s being brought to us? Should we just rubber-stamp it?

SEVERSON: Some amendments were simply to change words or terminology. What was “democratic societies” becomes “constitutional republics.” “Capitalism” is no longer in favor. The preferred term is “free enterprise.”

BERLANGA: One of the right-wing fanatics said that capitalism had a bad connotation—that people referred to us as a “capitalist pig.”

SEVERSON: Lawrence Allen, a Democrat board member and an educator with two masters degrees, opposes changing the word “capitalism.”

LAWRENCE ALLEN JR: I think there are a number of citizens today who say, well, I don’t have a job, I don’t have any money, so I don’t know how wonderful the free enterprise system has been. I think that capitalism and these systems have made some of our citizens very fat and a large number of them very thin, and so I don’t favor that at all.

SEVERSON: The teachers review committee recommended changing the word “expansionism,” as in American expansionism, to “imperialism.” The board rejected “imperialism.”

FISCHER: And there’s no other way you can explain, for example, the United States taking over Hawaii. Now eventually Hawaii becomes a state. Eventually it’s integrated into the United States. But originally in the nineteenth century it was clearly imperialism. There’s no other way to explain it.

SEVERSON: The board’s majority added an amendment that seems to justify the dark years of the McCarthy era. They believe documents known as the Venona Papers confirm suspicions of communist infiltration of the US government.

FISHER: The way the standard is written, as far as I’ve seen it so far, says that they must include information that exonerates McCarthy. In point of fact the documents they’re referring to do no such thing.

CARGILL: One of the chapters in this US history book was called “Nightmare at Omaha,” and some of the board members were very concerned about what was covered on this page—Americans landing at Omaha Beach.

SEVERSON: So board members met with the book publisher and got the title changed from ‘Nightmare at Omaha” to “A Day for Heroes.”

CARGILL: The details of the battle are still here. However, because of the sacrifices made that day by our American soldiers we want our students to learn that these men were truly heroes, and so it changes the tone that the teacher uses in the classroom, or if a student is reading a textbook it changes their whole mindset, and this is what we want.

FISCHER: Theoretically something like this could happen from the left some day as well as from the right. It’s to focus on what is good history teaching, and what is the purpose of history in the classroom? It’s to teach judgment and critical thinking. It’s not to teach a particular political version of the past.

MCLEROY: They need to have an accurate view of history. Accuracy, balance, free of bias, and I’ll vote for that every day of the week.

SEVERSON: He won’t be voting much longer, at least not on the board. McLeroy was defeated in the recent election, but he’ll continue to serve through the remainder of the year. The amendment process is not over yet. The Texas School Board meets one more time.

SEVERSON: Might there still be more amendments then?

CARGILL: Absolutely, yeah.

SEVERSON: Allen believes there may be far-reaching consequences to the board’s final vote.

ALLEN: There are other elected officials that are watching this who are saying that maybe the state board has run its course because of some of what they call hijacking the public curriculum, and so there are state representatives and other legislators out there ready to do away with the power of the state board in this type of activity.

SEVERSON: Texas purchases so many textbooks it drives the price down so much other states often buy exactly the same book. That’s why educators around the country are watching what happens here very closely.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Corpus Christi.

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Posted on April 30, 2010 by Fred Yi

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Laity and the Catholic Sex Abuse Scandal

Posted on April 23, 2010 by Fred Yi

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Pope Benedict XVI directly addressed the church sex abuse scandal this week. At the Vatican, the pope told pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square the church planned to take action in the face of allegations of abusive priests and negligent bishops. He did not elaborate, but soon afterward the Vatican accepted the resignations of bishops in Ireland and Belgium because of the scandal. Last weekend, during a visit to Malta, Benedict met privately with victims of clerical sex abuse, and with them he prayed and wept. The continuing crisis in the church has left millions of American Catholics sad, angry and wondering what can be done to resolve it. We want to talk about that with Margaret Steinfels, former editor-in-chief of Commonweal magazine, now co-director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University. She joins us from New York. Peggy, welcome. How do you describe the range of reactions among the US Catholic laity?

MARGARET STEINFELS (Center on Religion and Culture, Fordham University): I think that many people are surprised that this has come back on the TV screen and the newspapers. American Catholics went through this a couple times before, most recently in 2002, and I would say that at this point there is among many people a kind of battle fatigue—why hasn’t this been dealt with?

ABERNETHY: Has it increased divisions among Catholics here, or increased divisions between the laity here and the hierarchy?

STEINFELS: I don’t know that it—I guess we could say that it has increased the ongoing factionalism of the church. Where the right declares this is the problem of the sex revolution of the sixties and homosexuality in the clergy, people on the left say no, no, if we had women priests, bishops, and cardinals this would never happen. So I don’t know that there are additions to this, but I think there is certainly ongoing factionalism among Catholics.

ABERNETHY: The church is a very top-down organization. Are there things that Catholics in the pews can do from the bottom up that might be helpful?

STEINFELS: Of course it’s top-down, but it’s not the Marine Corps, and I do think that at the parish level, and my own parish, for example, the pastor has dealt with this forthrightly and directly, and I think the people in our pews anyway have a feeling, well, here’s somebody who really understands the problem and who’s prepared to talk about it from the pulpit. I think that is a great benefit to those Catholics who actually still go to Mass. Of course, those who don’t don’t hear that message.

ABERNETHY: So what should Pope Benedict do?

STEINFELS: Well, I think the whole Vatican needs to come to grips with this. They need to get the truth out insofar as they know it. They should get it out quickly, and I guess they should stop blaming the messengers, whoever they may be.

ABERNETHY: Do you think the messengers have been exaggerating the story?

STEINFELS: I’ve been a little surprised at the viral nature of the stories, and I do think that there has been a certain lack of professionalism among journalists in tracking down details of the stories, but again I don’t think we should blame the messengers. I think the Catholic Church needs to take this issue in hand and deal with it.

ABERNETHY: Margaret Steinfels of Fordham University, many thanks.

Muslim Home Schooling

Posted on April 23, 2010 by Fred Yi

BOB FAW, correspondent: In the heart of mainstream America, a Cub Scout derby where each of the home-designed cars is carefully weighed and measured before roaring off at breakneck speed. Here enterprise, ingenuity, and patience are justly rewarded.

ISRAFEEL JAKA: My favorite part was when I got in first.

FAW: It’s a mainstream event passionately embraced not only by the Jaka brothers, but also by nine- year-old Bilal Khan, whose education and upbringing is anything but mainstream. In his Loudoun County, Virginia home, Bilal is being taught math by his mother Zakia.

ZAKIA KHAN (speaking to Bilal): So 5 is closer to 7, or 10 is closer to 7?

FAW: In another home nearby, Priscilla Martinez is teaching her six children, ages two to 12, about condensation.

PRISCILLA MARTINEZ (speaking to children): We’re going to learn about clouds, evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.

FAW: They are part of a growing movement—no one knows the exact number—of Muslims who home-school their children because they want them to get a more holistic education than a public school can provide.

MARTINEZ: What we are trying to do is give our children a foundation within the family first, and their identities, with values. That’s kind of the springboard for what it is that we would like for them to take with them throughout life.

FAW: And home schooling lets these Muslim families focus on their faith. Using the computer, Bilal studies the Koran with a teacher from Pakistan, home of his father, Maqsood, and his mother.

ZAKIA KHAN: Over there we know that everything is Islamic-based, but over here we don’t see Islamic way of life outside the house.

MAQSOOD KHAN: We’re still tied to that country and want them to understand the culture and to learn about the religion.

FAW: Priscilla’s twelve- year-old daughter, Hidayah Jaka, a seventh grader, helps her eight-year-old brother, Mikaeel, to read the Koran.

HIDAYAH JAKA: It is better like this because we have the flexibility to do it whenever we want.

FAW: Muslim parents say home schooling can provide a better learning experience because the work can be tailored to each child’s needs. Bilal, for example, who learned to read before he entered public school, got bored when he had to wait for the other kids in his grade to catch up.

MAQSOOD KHAN: It was just not challenging enough for him, and so we felt that we could probably do a lot more to challenge them and to help them learn. They can learn more of what they like, what they feel comfortable with.

FAW: In each home the older children assist the younger siblings. When fifteen-year-old Meena Khan is not studying geometry, history, and literature, she helps her fourteen-year-old sister, Heba, with her math. No matter what‘s going on, both families stop what they are doing to pray five times every day. All this, proponents argue, is part of instilling values which their children would not get in public schools.

RIZWAN JAKA: We’ve chosen home schooling for our children and our family to provide that, again, the strong values and strong foundation as well as strong academics and strong respect and understanding of our faith as well as respect for other faiths.

FAW: Are they getting a good education? Meena excelled in public school before starting home schooling four years ago. She studies totally on her own with the help of a curriculum for home-schoolers. It takes discipline, she says, but she feels she’s doing even better here than she did in public school.

MEENA KHAN: I think I’m getting a very good education. I can go at my own pace, so if I understand something I can go ahead, but if I don’t understand something I can slow down on it and review it and go over it again and get help if I need to.

FAW: It is a glowing picture. But some educators feel that children are better served in a school setting. At the University of Maryland, where she helps train teachers, Melanie Killen worries that home schoolers can be sheltered and miss the benefits of rubbing shoulders with different kinds of students.

MELANIE KILLEN (University of Maryland): Peer relationships are very different from sibling relationships. This is where you learn how to share, negotiate, how you learn how to resolve conflicts. There’s a whole host of very important, fundamental building bricks and blocks for how we become members of a culture that come out of the peer interaction.

FAW: Muslim parents who home school understand the criticism and go to great lengths, they say, to expose their children to outside interests. To help integrate their kids into the culture, the Khans and Jakas go to scouting events, to classes at museums and interfaith meetings. Exposed to different faiths, they also bring their faith to others. Here they’re not only part of the mainstream culture, they are totally caught up in it.

MIKAEEL JAKA: Today I got my car checked in, and I also got a patch, and I watched a lot of cars go down. It was really cool.

FAW: Activities like this, say Muslim home-schooling parents, show that their kids are not cloistered.

RIZWAN JAKA: It’s important to us, again, to make sure that, you know, the children get to know people, and that they’re not sheltered, that they intermingle with people, and they get to know the larger society.

PRISCILLA MARTINEZ: We aren’t looking to run away from the world and draw the blinds and shut everything and everyone out living in our own little utopia. What we’re looking to do, especially with our children, is to be out there, to get to know our neighbors.

FAW: While each of these families says they have experienced prejudice, they insist prejudice was not a factor in deciding to home school. But prejudice, say educators, can be subtle.

MELANIE KILLEN: These are Muslim families living in a predominantly non-Muslim area. You have different conventions, dress, dietary practices, and all that. But there’s also implicit forms of prejudice that people experience and oftentimes don’t even call it that, but they’re uncomfortable. They might feel excluded. There’s this level of uncomfortableness about being in a school that’s not part of their own culture and religion.

FAW: Another pitfall: While Priscilla and Zakia are both dedicated and smart, neither was trained as a teacher.

MELANIE KILLEN: You need training in terms of how to be a teacher. You’re managing a classroom of children, you’re figuring out how to do this, but you’re also aware of social development and children’s social, cognitive development, their biological development. These are all things that they need to know about.

FAW: To make sure home schoolers are making progress, Virginia requires they meet certain requirements by taking a test, by interviewing with a certified teacher or handing in a portfolio of their work. Muslim home schooling is still a small movement, but those who spend hours on the front lines are not crippled by any doubt.

MARTINEZ: Our goal is basically to bring up our children who are contributing citizens, who feel that they can and should give back to the world and ultimately to grow up in peace and be able to live a fulfilling life.

FAW: As a sign in her living room reads, “Home is where your story begins,” here where the alphabet, arithmetic, and Allah meet.

For Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, this is Bob Faw in Loudoun County, Virginia.

Haiti: A Personal Journey

Posted on April 23, 2010 by Fred Yi

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: Nestled among all the family photos at my grandparents’ home are other memories as well—art and gifts that symbolize their decades of work as missionaries in Haiti.

(speaking to her grandparents): I made a scrapbook for you of my trip.

Wesley and June Churchill are in their 90s now, but still feel as connected to Haiti as they were more than 30 years ago, when they first went there. My grandfather was a high school science teacher. As a United Methodist, he believed he was called to help others, so during breaks from school he did various service projects. In the 1970s, he connected with a group of men who were drilling wells for clean water in Haiti. After Grandpa retired from teaching, he and Grandma decided to work more long-term there. They joined with a small group of other Christians to establish the nondenominational Haiti Gospel Mission in Despinos, a village about 45 minutes outside Port-au-Prince. They began a variety of projects, including a church, a school, and a medical clinic. My grandparents worked in Haiti until 1997, when Grandpa turned 80. A young missionary couple, April and Joel Hess, now lead the work in Despinos. When I was a teenager, my grandparents brought me there to visit. It was clear I wasn’t cut out for missionary life.

JUNE CHURCHILL: I can remember you going into your bedroom and a squeal came, “Grandpa, there’s a dead mouse in my shoe.”

LAWTON: They were my great shoes, my new shoes. I remember that very vividly. Other things I don’t remember, I remember the dead mouse in my shoe.

JUNE CHURCHILL: Grandpa took care of it.

LAWTON: I returned to Haiti last month not as a missionary, but a reporter covering the aftermath of the earthquake, and I went to Despinos to see what was happening at the mission today. I brought back some video to show my grandparents.

JUNE CHURCHILL: Is that Renol?

WESLEY CHURCHILL: That’s Renol?

LAWTON: At the compound, Renol, who worked with my grandparents in the 1970s, still takes care of the grounds and helps keep things going.

JUNE CHURCHILL: Renol used to ride into Port-au-Prince with Grandpa. He’d always say to me, “Mama, I guarde Papa, I guarde Papa,” and he did. He’d have a big club with him.

LAWTON: Renol showed me the changes to the mission house. The house sustained only slight damage during the earthquake, including some cracks on the roof, and a small part of the compound walls came down. Renol told me all about my grandpa’s influence on the mission, in big ways and small.

RENOL: The big tree, Brother Churchill liked it.

LAWTON: Brother Churchill liked the big tree.

RENOL: Yeah, long time he wanted to keep it.

LAWTON: He wanted to keep the tree.

Just up the road from the house is the Haiti Gospel Mission Church. Pastor Elison Bien-Aime showed me the moderate damage there, most at the front of the building. The church has now raised enough money not only to repair the damage, but to add some columns to strengthen the building and an archway to make a more attractive entrance. Pastor Elison praised the construction work of my grandpa and another missionary, Melvin Barger.

REV. ELISON BIEN-AIME: Brother Churchill and Brother Barger did a good job.

LAWTON: I will tell my grandfather you said he did a good job.

BIEN-AIME: Exactly. He is a good engineer.

LAWTON: Because the church stands.

BIEN-AIME: Yeah.

LAWTON: Elison grew up around the mission and was active in the church even as a boy.

JUNE CHURCHILL: He was always polite and a really nice boy. For a boy from out there to go to school and go to seminary he’s done well.

LAWTON: Elison told me he believed the earthquake has actually strengthened people’s faith in God. He said the church has been full every Sunday since. It was certainly full on this Sunday, when he called me up front to bring greetings from my family.

LAWTON (speaking at church): My grandfather is 94 years old. After the earthquake he said, “I want to go back to help them.” I think he will help you with his prayers.

Elison told me my grandparents had a big influence on him.

LAWTON: That’s my grandma and grandpa today.

BIEN-AIME: I’m very happy to see them.

LAWTON: He’s 94, and she’s 91.

BIEN-AIME: These are two monuments.

LAWTON: Two monuments.

At the Haiti Gospel Mission satellite church in Leogane, Pastor Gilles Pierre was also moved at seeing a current photo of my grandparents.

JUNE CHURCHILL: Ever since we established the church in Leogane, he was with us.

LAWTON: He’s been there a long time.

CHURCHILL: He’s the only pastor that’s been at that church.

LAWTON: The church here didn’t fare very well. The building, as well as the parsonage and the school, were severely damaged. Pastor Gilles barely escaped.

LAWTON: It just came down on your head.

REV. GILLES PIERRE: God saved me.

LAWTON: God saw you?

PIERRE: God saved me.

LAWTON: God saved you.

PIERRE: Oui.

LAWTON: Leogane was near the epicenter of the quake, and about 80 percent of the town was destroyed. Pastor Gilles took me through a cornfield to show me the destruction at his wife’s family’s home. Most of his congregation members have lost everything. He hopes to rebuild, but for now he worries about surviving day-to-day. The church has moved the worship services to a large tent donated by US churches. It’s difficult for my grandparents to hear such stories about their friends.

JUNE CHURCHILL: It is so sad, because the poor people had nothing to begin with hardly, and now they…

LAWTON: But there were happy stories, too. After my appearance at church, old friends came to say hello. Some remembered when I had come before; others wanted to meet the Churchills’ granddaughter, or as they called me, “petite-petite fille Churchill.” As word of my visit spread, one old friend drove in from Port-au-Prince to see me.

BOUCHARD: It’s my friend.

LAWTON: Yeah, from a long time ago.

JUNE CHURCHILL: That is. That is Bouchard. We’ve known him since he was a little boy. Yeah, that’s Bouchard. He sounds so natural.

LAWTON: The clinic my grandparents helped build is now thriving. There are two nurses on staff and a doctor who comes in every day, Monday through Friday. They see up to 20 patients a day. There’s a large, well-supplied pharmacy, and the supervisor of the clinic, who also grew up at the mission, tells me that in the back room they still plan on fulfilling my grandpa’s dream of setting up a laboratory.

JUNE CHURCHILL: That was Grandpa’s goal, to get that finished.

LAWTON: Immediately after the earthquake, injured people flooded to the clinic from miles away seeking medical treatment, and many patients are still getting follow-up treatment.

JUNE CHURCHILL: I’m sure the clinic was supposed to be there for this purpose.

LAWTON: When I was there Haitian schools had not yet reopened, so patients whose homes had been destroyed were living in the school. One was this woman, whose hand had to be amputated. Another was this girl, whose leg was injured.

LAWTON: Before the quake, the school had 255 students ages 3 to 15. The principal is Dalce Jean Augmanois. He told me, “The Churchills did a good work, because without them, we would have no clinic or school or church. Because of them, the children will grow up here and be able to work.”

Jeemps Pierre is a Bible school student who lives at the mission and helps out. He never knew my grandparents but says he’s impressed by the Americans who continue to come there to work.

JEEMPS PIERRE: Sometimes there is no power, sometimes there is no water, sometimes it’s very, very hot, and they stay here to help, and that’s a good, good, a great thing. They help a lot here. This mission is very, very important for this community.

LAWTON: Many of the things my grandfather tried to introduce never fully caught on, like bee-keeping and breeding stronger bulls and cooking with solar energy. Still, my grandparents told me they are gratified to see that work at the church, the clinic, and the school continues even despite a devastating earthquake. A testament, grandma says, to the resilience of the Haitian people. It’s also a testament to the work my grandparents did, the lives they touched, and the legacy they left behind.

I’m Kim Lawton in Despinos, Haiti.

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