Amplify’d from www.nj.com

In N.J. Senate testimony, Bayonne man says prominent Jesuit scholar abused him as a child

Reena Rose Sibayan/The Jersey Journal

Inside St. Paul's Church on Greenville Avenue in Jersey City, where Keith Brennan says he was abused in 1976.

TRENTON — It was another day of endless hearings in Trenton.

The Senate Judiciary Committee was taking testimony on a proposed bill that would do away with a two-year statute of limitations on lawsuits alleging child sex abuse. There were a few dozen spectators in the gallery — and one reporter.

Then a 48-year-old man leaned into a microphone.

And delivered a bombshell.

"My story began in 1976, St. Paul’s Church in the Greenville section of Jersey City," said Keith Brennan.

Speaking about his experiences publicly for the first time, Brennan, of Bayonne, recalled four years of sexual abuse by church staff, starting with Keith Pecklers, the church’s young music director. Brennan said he was 14 at the time and that Pecklers was about three-and-a-half years his senior.

After about a year of the abuse by Pecklers, Brennan said, he reported it to the church deacon, Thomas Stanford, who then took over abusing Brennan, plying him with drugs and alcohol before abusing him repeatedly over the course of three years.

"Thirty-four years have gone by but I have not forgotten a single day, a single detail of my abuse," said Brennan. "While my abusers were having careers and vacations and writing books and enjoying their lives, they killed me to a certain point. They destroyed a young boy’s hope, career, what could have been."

Pecklers, who became a priest, is now a prominent Jesuit scholar. A professor of liturgy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, he has written, contributed to or edited nine books, according to his Facebook page, and is a frequent commentator on Vatican affairs for American media outlets — including the sex abuse scandals.

In 2008 — after decades of suffering from depression, anxiety, panic attacks, self-mutilation, an eating disorder and the fear that his abusers may have given him AIDS — Brennan said he contacted attorney Stephen Rubino, an expert on child sexual abuse cases. Rubino forwarded Brennan’s accusations to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, along with a DVD of Brennan and his family describing how the abuse had harmed him. Within weeks, the archdiocese entered into mediation with Brennan and eventually settled for an undisclosed six-figure sum, Brennan said. He provided a partially redacted letter from his attorney outlining the distribution of the settlement amounts, dated Sept. 24, 2008, as proof.

Though Brennan testified in an open hearing on Thursday, the Ledger deferred publication of his story until efforts could be made to contact people and institutions he accused in his session before the Senate committee.

Reached by phone in Italy, Pecklers would not say whether he ever had sexual contact with Brennan, but said actual abuse could not have taken place because he was not an adult at the time.

"In the 1970s, I was a student — I was a minor myself — so it would be impossible to be accused of that type of thing. I was 17 years old, so that’s the end of the story," said Pecklers.

Brennan said in a later interview with the Star-Ledger that Pecklers began molesting him against his will about a month before Pecklers turned 18, and continued well past his birthday.

Jim Goodness, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Newark, said he could not discuss anything related to litigation matters. However, he confirmed Pecklers had worked in the parish as a layman until he left to become a Jesuit priest.

Stanford, he said, had been a priest within the diocese until he left the priesthood on his own for unknown reasons in the mid-1980s.

"He asked for a leave from parish work some time around ’85 or ’86 and never came back," said Goodness.

Until 2008, according to the Paterson Diocese, Stanford worked as manager of the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Totowa and as a part-time music manager for Holy Cross Parish in Wayne.

Richard Sokerka, spokesman for the Paterson Diocese, said officials there were told two years ago by the Archdiocese of Newark that Stanford had been named in a sex abuse case. "He was immediately terminated from both positions," said Sokerka. Attempts to get comment from Stanford were not successful.

Robert Sciarrino/The Star-Ledger

(L-R) Clarks Cotton, of Mendham; Fred Marigliano, of Green Brook; Rhett Hackett, of Sayerville; and Julian Colella, of Williamstown; listen as the Senate Judiciary Committee considers sex abuse victims bill on Thursday.

The Star-Ledger located the address of a Thomas Stanford in northern New Jersey. Independently, Brennan supplied a description of Stanford’s car and its license plate, having written it down during an encounter two years earlier. When The Star-Ledger visited the apartment Friday and Saturday, the car was in the allotted parking spot. Occupants inside the apartment did not come to the door.

Brennan was one of several victims of childhood sexual abuse to testify at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday in favor of a bill that would do away with the state’s two-year statute of limitations on lawsuits for such sex abuse.

Currently, victims have two years from the time they realize their abuse damaged them to file suit before the statute runs out. Brennan said he would not have had a case if he actually filed a lawsuit, but suspects the archdiocese settled the abuse through arbitration because of how well he recalled his abuse and the detailed account of it he gave them.

Patrick Brannigan, executive director of the New Jersey Catholic Conference, testified against the bill, arguing that it would make institutions responsible for abuse that happened decades ago, long after critical evidence has disappeared. Proponents testified that the burden of proof remains the same no matter how old the case is, and that evidence that has disappeared only makes it harder to successfully sue.

Catholic bishops have opposed similar bills in other states, and earlier this year were instrumental in a successful effort to stop Connecticut from easing its 30-year statute of limitations.

Brennan, who left the church when he was 17, told the senators he considers himself an "estranged Catholic." He said he spoke publicly to encourage other victims to come out.

"When you are no longer victim to the secret, you can then take control of your life. If more men and women could be encouraged to come forward, healing would be contagious. This is my reason for coming forward after 34 years," he said.

By Matt Friedman and Ted Sherman/The Star-Ledger

Staff writers Jessica Calefati and Bob Considine contributed reporting.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: • Newark archbishop shielded at least 4 priests accused of sexual abuse • N.J. Senate panel approves extended time frame for childhood sexual abuse lawsuits • N.J. Senate to consider relaxing limits on sex abuse lawsuits • Archdiocese of Newark denounces Star-Ledger report on sex abuse cases • Judge dismisses sex abuse lawsuit filed by 2 elders against N.J. Catholic orphanage Read more at www.nj.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/iccr

ID Priest accused of sex abuse stripped of duties

Amplify’d from www.kivitv.com

ID Priest accused of sex abuse stripped of duties

Associated Press - December 13, 2010 4:54 PM ET BOISE, Idaho (AP) - A Roman Catholic priest from Idaho who was accused of sexually abusing a minor in the 1980s has been sanctioned and can no longer serve as a priest . The sanctions approved by Pope Benedict XVI involve Rev. William R. Gould, who most recently was assigned to a parish in Post Falls. Gould was placed on administrative leave in May by Bishop Michael Driscoll amid allegations that he engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior with a male under 18. An investigation followed and results were sent to the Vatican. On Monday, Gould was barred from taking part in any ministry activities within the church and lost his ability to function as a priest. The allegations date back 29 years ago when Gould was assigned to a parish in Idaho Falls. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Read more at www.kivitv.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/icch

Amplify’d from www.independent.co.uk

Is the Catholic Church in favour of GM crops?

By Steve Connor

Perhaps understandably, the interpretation that this has opened the way for the Vatican to endorse GM food has set the ether alight with rumour

Is the Vatican close to endorsing the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops in order to feed the world's growing population? Could it be that the Catholic Church is about to take a moral position on GM food?

A leaked document from a group of scientists linked to Rome has set a hare running about the possible endorsement of GM technology by the Pope. The document, from scientists linked to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, suggested that there is a moral duty to adopt GM technology in order to combat hunger.

The document was drawn up following a "study week" sponsored by the academy last year, but it has only recently come into the wider public domain. About 40 scientists, including a handful of academy members, met behind closed doors in May 2009 to discuss "transgenic plants for food security in the context of development".

Their report came to several conclusions, including the need to develop new agricultural techniques to feed the present world population of 6.8 billion people, some one billion of whom are undernourished. Perhaps the most striking conclusion was that GM technology is contributing towards addressing the challenges of unsustainable agriculture and that there is "nothing intrinsic" about GM crops that would make food unsafe.

"Special efforts should be made to provide poor farmers in the developing world with access to improved [GM] crop varieties adapted to their local conditions," the report also says.

Perhaps understandably, the interpretation that this has opened the way for the Vatican to endorse GM food has set the ether alight with rumour.

However, this notion was quickly dispelled earlier this month by unequivocal statements from several Vatican spokesmen saying that the authors of the report do not speak either for the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, or the Vatican – and certainly not for the Pope.

"The statement is not a statement of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences because the Pontifical Academy of Sciences as such – 80 members – wasn't consulted about it and will not be consulted about it," said Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the academy's chancellor.

It appears that some people who attended the closed meeting were also unhappy with the way the statement was formulated and publicised. One attendee, Bishop George Nkuo of Kumbo, Cameroon, made the point, for instance, that many Africans view GM technology as a technological yoke that ensures poor farmers in Africa are reliant on Western seed companies.

Several of the scientists attending the meeting are well-known advocates of GM crops. They included Professor Ingo Potrykus of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, who invented vitamin-enriched "golden rice", and Professor Peter Raven, the retired president of the Missouri Botanical Garden, who has links with Monsanto, the GM crop company.

Both professors are members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences – incidentally, the only science academy of an established religion – and both are almost messianic in their support of GM crops. Professor Raven said that we will not be able to feed the expected nine billion people on the planet by 2050 unless we adopt GM technology.

Any unwarranted curbs on the use of GM crops could therefore become a moral issue, he suggested. "Why should we go into battle with one hand tied behind our backs?" he asked me.

Intriguingly, although the debate over GM crops has died down in Britain for the moment, something tells me it is set once more to become one of the most contentious scientific issues of our time – and one where both sides will invoke morality to justify their position.

The mass release of government documents by WikiLeaks reminds me of the time in the early 1980s when data protection and freedom of information were still only embryonic concepts. Then, the fear was centred on the power of the government machinery to browse through our personal details held on computer networks. It didn't occur to anyone that technology would turn the tables, and lead to government secrets being browsed by the public. Read more at www.independent.co.uk

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/iccb

Amplify’d from www.worldjewishcongress.org

At Vatican, World Jewish Congress leaders call on Pope Benedict XVI to reject assault on Israel

The leadership of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) has been received by Pope Benedict XVI in private audience at the Vatican. WJC President Ronald S. Lauder, who was accompanied by WJC Secretary General Designate Daniel Diker and Deputy Secretary General Maram Stern, raised his concern at the growing political assault on Israel's legitimacy. Lauder asked Benedict to speak out against the delegitimization of Israel and especially the denial of Jewish holy sites such as the Western Wall as well as the Tomb of Rachel near Bethlehem, which is holy to Jews and also to Christians. "We discussed critical issues affecting world Jewry," Lauder said, adding: "We expressed to the Pope how much we value the close relationship we have enjoyed with the Vatican over many years in our quest for a secure Israel and a safer future for Jews everywhere.”

Pope Benedict emphasized the need to continue to combat anti-Semitism in the Christian world, which he characterized as unacceptable. Diker voiced the deep concern of Jews everywhere, and especially in Israel, about the political assault on Israel as the nation state of the Jewish People and asked that the Church take a lead role in speaking out against this new "politically correct" form of anti-Semitism. “The ongoing assault against the State of Israel has triggered dangerous aftershocks in Jewish communities around the world,” explained Diker. Benedict responded that the Church recognized the historical connection of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland, the Holy Land, going back to the time of Abraham. He expressed his commitment to help foster understanding of the bond between the nation of Israel and the land of Israel among people throughout the world.

Lauder also expressed concern that both Christians and Jews in the Middle East face the threat of radical Islam and expressed his sympathies over the murder of Christian leaders in Iraq and Turkey noting with concern the drop in the number of Christians living in Bethlehem. The pontiff of the Catholic Church expressed the importance of Jews and Catholics working together to fight anti-Semitism in all its forms, noting again the patrimony of Judaism to Christianity. He indicated that Jews and Christians needed one another. Benedict added that the bonds of brotherhood and goodwill between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people should continue to be strengthened.

In Rome, the WJC leaders also held meetings with senior Italian officials, including Foreign Minister Franco Frattini. Lauder praised Italy's support of Israel and friendship to the Jewish people. Italy, he said, had "a key role in advancing the peace process in the Middle East." Frattini awarded Lauder the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity.

Related content

» Jewish leaders ask Pope Benedict to combat delegitimization of Israel - Haaretz, Israel

» WJC asks Pope to denounce delegitimization of Israel - Jerusalem Post, Israel

» Speak against Israel delegitimization, Jewish leaders urge pope - JTA, USA

» Des leaders juif rencontrent le Pape Benoît XVI - Israel7.com

» Papst empfängt Präsidenten des Jüdischen Weltkongresses in Audienz - EPD, Germany

» Il World Jewish Congress ringrazia il Papa per il suo impegno nel dialogo con gli ebrei - Radio Vaticana

» Benedico XVI y las buenas relaciones con el Judaísmo - Agencia SIC, Spain

» What is your view on the necessity of inter-faith dialogue?

» WJC leaders meet with Pope Benedict XVI  Read more at www.worldjewishcongress.org

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/icc6

Vatican, World Council of Churches to Meet Yearly

Amplify’d from www.catholic.net

Vatican, World Council of Churches to Meet Yearly

Zenit News

Linked to this symbol of cold weather, Olav Fykse Tveit spoke later with Vatican Radio about winter. "One says that we may now have an ecumenical winter," he reflected. "And as a Norwegian I ask back: What's so terrible in the winter? We know that winter can be beautiful. [...] In the winter we have a time to think, to reflect on what we have been through and what we can expect from the future and prepare well." Part of this future is a newly established annual meeting with the Vatican, set up as a fruit of Tveit's visit to the Pope and members of the Curia. The objective of the annual event is to "define a methodology of common witness and proclamation of the Gospel, to speak to the world with one voice, above all on ethical and theological topics," L'Osservatore Romano explained in a report Wednesday. The annual meetings will be more intimate than the current workings on relations between the Church and the council. The current commission was created in 1965 and has 36 members, 18 from each side.   But when Tveit visited the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, and its president, Cardinal Kurt Koch, the new meeting plan was established. Father Gosbert Byamungu, an official of the unity council who accompanied Tveit during all the stages of his stay in Rome, attributes this to "positive relations." According to the priest, those relations "help every movement" and when, "as in our case, there is friendship and trust, we can begin to discuss the most burning and difficult problems, which up to now have been avoided." Common issues Tveit and the Pope met privately on Dec. 4 for about 15 minutes, and the pastor reported that the Holy Father offered his support and encouragement.   The Pope expressed interest in "the way we are developing and planning our future work," explained Tveit in a statement at the World Council of Churches Web site.   Moreover, Benedict XVI urged putting "the Bible at the center of the theological talks and reflections, to reinforce the visible unity of Christians." The Pontiff and the pastor also discussed the situation of Christians in the Middle East, and the situation of the upcoming secession referendum in Sudan. Regarding this latter issue, Tveit affirmed that the "Roman Catholic Church is a very important actor, and in Khartoum the Church has a very visible and strong presence." During his stay in Rome, the World Council of Churches official also gave a sermon at a Methodist church, visited St. Peter's, stopped by a soup kitchen run by the Catholic lay Community of Sant'Egidio, and met with Maria Voce, the president of a Catholic group dedicated to unity, the Focolare Movement. Read more at www.catholic.net

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/icc1

Amplify’d from blogs.wsj.com

High Tide: From Vatican Bank Mafia Cover-Ups To Visa Revocation Proposals

By Samuel Rubenfeld

A roundup of corruption-related news from Dow Jones and other sources.

Wikileaks: Among the latest revelations from the cables released by Wikileaks: The U.S. envoy in Uganda proposed last year possibly revoking the Uganda security minister’s U.S. visa over allegations he had accepted bribes in exchange for supporting the sale of oil assets in the African country. Rio Tinto Ltd. handed over evidence to the Chinese authorities during its bribery investigation that resulted in its employees being jailed. Nigerian activists want an investigation into allegations that Royal Dutch Shell PLC infiltrated government ministries, and the country was blasted as a “cesspool” of corruption. (Dow Jones Newswires, Business Spectator, 234 Next, Der Spiegel) Bribery: Thomas Fox and the FCPAProfessor each analyze the settlement reached by RAE Systems Inc. over FCPA violations. Mabutho Sithole, a spokesman for the premier of Mpumalanga, South Africa, is under investigation for bribery after allegations surfaced over a R5,000 payment to a journalist in exchange for killing a story about the premier. Sithole called the payment a Christmas gift, but wouldn’t comment on the investigation. (Mail & Guardian Online) U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hinted that she didn’t think Nigeria would move against former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, despite having filed charges against him in the TSKJ bribery scandal. (Nigerian Compass) A judge rejected a motion to dismiss bribery charges against a former New Jersey assemblyman. (Antimoneylaundering.us) The anti-bribery hot water (pdf) keeps getting hotter and hotter. (Bryan Cave client alert) Predictions for 2011 from Thebriberyact.com. Money laundering: The AP does a deep-dive story on the alleged money laundering at Vatican Bank. New documents show investigators’ suspicions that clergy may have acted as fronts for corrupt businessmen and Mafia. (AP, The Independent) As part of its money laundering prevention efforts, India’s market watchdog Sebi will now keep a tab on mutual fund investments made by bureaucrats and politicians. (Times of India) The Nigerian federal government expressed concern about the effectiveness of recovering laundered assets just as it announced the anti-graft agency had recovered $11 billion. (Vanguard) A West African AML consortium praised Ghana’s efforts at combating money laundering, while the World Bank says the country will avoid a resource curse. (Modern Ghana, Reuters) Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency will lead prosecution of money laundering cases there. (Antimoneylaundering.us) Sanctions: Scotland-based engineering company Weir Group pleaded guilty to two charges of breaching United Nations’ sanctions on contracts awarded between 2000 and 2002 related to the Oil For Food program in Iraq. (Wall Street Journal) A U.S. official said the international community is ready to impose further sanctions on Iran, which the country is blaming for smog problems. The U.S. isn’t worried about Turkey’s trade with Iran, the State Department said. (AP, Wall Street Journal, Hurriyet Daily News) The EU is ready to impose sanctions on Ivory Coast amid its election problems. (AFP) Ghana lifted a ban on league soccer to avoid sanctions from FIFA. (Reuters) Whistleblowers: Corporations still don’t like the bounty program created under the financial regulatory reform law. (Wall Street Journal) A lawyer with Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz blogs about how the rules on the program fall short. Malaysia’s creating its own whistleblower bounty program. More here. (The Star, Bernama.com) Whistleblowers live a lonely life of despair and retaliation. (Sydney Morning Herald) A whistleblower wrongly detained in China will get a $4,500 payout. (Global Times) General Anti-Corruption: German public prosecutors Cologne raided the offices and private homes of an unspecified number of Ford Motor Co.’s staff and suppliers as part of an investigation into alleged corruption. The company said it’s cooperating with investigators and noted it is not a subject of the probe. (Wall Street Journal) An Indonesian judge filed a legal complaint against the country’s anti-corruption agency after they spoke about him accepting bribes. (Jakarta Globe) An Indian state is starting to seize property belonging to officials accused of corruption before the charges are proven. India’s going to take its time with the notices on the wireless spectrum, while one government official says everyone needs to quiet down about corruption there. The country’s Central Vigilance Commission launched a website for people to upload eyewitness accounts of corruption. (WSJ India Real Time, Dow Jones Newswires, WSJ India Real Time, Times of India) The release of the latest iteration of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index sparked protests in Indonesia. (Global Post) The prosecution in a massive anti-corruption sweep in the Mexican city of Michoacan is falling apart, documents show. (LA Times) Read more at blogs.wsj.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/icbw

The fact that the Vatican had blocked moves to permit the Murphy commission to investigate senior Vatican officials regarding the rape of children by ...

Amplify’d from www.irishtimes.com

Vatican could give master classes when it comes to Machiavellian power play

RITE & REASON: The WikiLeaks Vatican disclosures confirm what we knew about the Holy See

THE AMERICAN author Stephen L Carter remarked some years ago that if churches are to be a moral bulwark in society they must avoid being “seduced by the lure of temporal power”. The fact that the Vatican had blocked moves to permit the Murphy commission to investigate senior Vatican officials regarding the rape of children by priests here, confirmed by cables from the US ambassador to the Holy See, come as no surprise to seasoned and critical observers.

What the leaks confirm is that the Holy See/Vatican views itself simultaneously as two distinct entities: the centre of a “global community” and as the head office of an international legal entity with sovereign status. Its deliberately selective embodiment of one or the other of these is something invariably contingent upon particular circumstances.

This shape shifting allows the Vatican to capitalise on the advantages afforded by both international status and transnational community. While bargaining for privileges with national governments, the Vatican utilises a benign language of religious “community”, protected by the freedom of thought, conscience and belief clauses of the main human rights instruments. Demands for separate schools, tax privileges as a charitable organisation and access to mechanisms of policymaking relative to its perceived interests are predicated on the notion of benign religious fraternity.

Yet, when the Machiavellian nature of the institutional church’s corporate behaviour is scrutinised, the drawbridges are raised. “Sovereignty” – not “community” – becomes the dominant language of the church. Hence the invocation of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in the face of US legal action into abuse allegations by Catholic priests there. Here the commission of inquiry and the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs were both given short shrift by the princes of the church when asked to explain their role in the most serious and systematic breach of human rights in any peacetime European state. Inquiries were rerouted via “diplomatic channels” or ignored.

Institutional Catholicism’s ambiguous international legal status, which most nation-states recognise unilaterally, affords it a special position at the United Nations. The Vatican’s privileged “observer status”, which was upgraded significantly in 2004, permits the Holy See’s diplomatic representatives to use its influence over member states to ensure that UN objectives are not antithetical to its ideological position on a range of issues.

This is why the goals of the International Conferences on Population Development have not been fully realised, and why targets to improve the empowerment of women have been significantly diluted in the UN’s millennium development goals programme.

The Vatican, in alliance with some of the most odious regimes on the planet, has conspired to subvert and obstruct the provision of greater access to reproductive health for women. What is disappointing, but still not surprising, is the continued craven “deference” to the church displayed by our own political representatives. What should have happened following the Vatican’s failure to co-operate fully with the inquiry, indeed what was argued for by some commentators, was the expulsion of the Papal Nuncio pending an adjustment in the church’s attitude.

The Vatican has played the international system with masterful adroitness; morphing from “sovereign” city state to moral guardian of national identity to beleaguered minority to global community as and when it is appropriate or advantageous to their institutional and ideological interests.

There are two possible ways to respond: either call time on the Holy See’s strategising and demand it face up to its moral responsibilities; or, very quietly, start sending our own political class for courses at the Vatican school of law and diplomacy.

Kenneth Houston is a researcher at the University of Ulster’s Incore institute. This article draws on analysis published in the recent issue of the Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies (Issue 3)  Read more at www.irishtimes.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/icbu

CHINESE GOVERNMENT COMPILES 'BLACKLIST' OF CHRISTIANS IN CHINA

Amplify’d from www.libertynewsonline.com

The Chinese government has launched a crackdown on “house churches” — Protestant congregations that don’t belong to the state-sanctioned church organization — branding the house church movement a “cult.” That report comes from the China Aid Association (CAA), a U.S.-based Christian group founded in 2002, which calls the Chinese government’s move “grave and troubling.” The CAA said in a Dec. 7 report: “The all-powerful Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party launched ‘Operation Deterrence’ on Dec. 1. “According to the Politburo’s top-secret instructions, the crackdown on the largest component of the mainland Chinese church is to continue through March 2011 . . . [The party’s security apparatus has] been notified to collect information about house churches throughout the country and turn these reports in to their superiors. “A long ‘blacklist’ of church leaders and influential believers reportedly has been drawn up.” Some 70 million Chinese believers worship in unregistered house churches, according to a 2007 Pew Research Center report. China’s state-sanctioned church organization, the Three Self-Patriotic Movement (TSPM), has only about 16 million Protestant members. Chinese Christians are reluctant to register with the TSPM — the “three” are self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation — due to theological concerns, CNSNews reported. TSPM leaders say loyalty to the state should take precedence over belief in Christ. “Recent government actions against Christians, including official harassment of influential house church leaders, the ordination of a Catholic bishop in defiance of the Vatican’s wishes and even the cyberattacks that brought down China Aid’s Chinese and English news websites, appear to have been a prelude signaling the advent of the crackdown,” the CAA reported in its website. “Operation Deterrence harks back to the previous era of hostilities and often brutal government persecution that had for decades driven unknown hundreds of thousands of believers ‘underground,’ worshipping in secret and fearing for their lives and freedom.” The labeling of the house church movement as a “cult” is ominous. China termed the Falun Gong meditation movement a cult in 1999. Since then more than 100,000 practitioners have been sentenced to “reform through labor” camps, according to sources cited by the U.S. State Department. “They have also been given long prison sentences and even the death penalty simply because of their religious practices, and reports of Falun Gong practitioners being beaten to death in prison or while in other forms of detention have been common,” the CAA observed. “The specter of similar treatment now hangs over house church Christians as a result of the ‘cult’ label.” Read more at www.libertynewsonline.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/icbm

Amplify’d from www.news.com.au

Wikileaks reveals plan to dump the Royals, Prince Charles

By BARCLAY CRAWFORD

Uncertain role ... The Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Elizabeth II, left, with Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.

OFFICIALS have held secret talks about dumping the Royal Family as the head of the Commonwealth.

Secret US cables uncovered by website WikiLeaks reveal Prince Charles will not automatically assume the title when the Queen dies.

The top bureaucrat who runs the Commonwealth has told US officials in London that Prince Charles is no cert- ainty because he does not "command the same respect as the Queen".

Commonwealth secretariat director of political affairs Amitav Banerji secretly told the US that "succession" would have to be addressed by leaders of the Commonwealth nations, including Australia.

"Banerji acknowledged that succession of the Head of the Commonwealth would have to be dealt with when Queen Elizabeth passes, as there is no rule stipulating that the British monarch is the head and no procedure for selecting a new head," the cable says.

Commonwealth officials believed Prince Charles was not particularly interested and said the Commonwealth was trying quietly to get him to become more involved in Commonwealth affairs.

Mr Banerji said that complicating any move against the Royals was their ownership of the headquarters in London.

"Banerji noted Marlborough House, the Commonwealth Secretariat's current location, was a royal property, owned and funded by the British Royal Family, and mused that may be a factor in the discussions," the cable says.

Removing the head of the Royal Family as leader of the "Commonwealth of Nations" would be a major blow to the British monarchy with several nations - including Australia - likely to revisit the republican debate when the Queen dies.

Already 16 of the 54 Commonwealth nations have dumped the monarch as the head of state and removed "British" from its official title.

Another leaked cable revealed Britain's ambassador to the Vatican feared the Pope's invitation for disgruntled Anglicans to switch to Catholicism might spark anti-Catholic violence in the United Kingdom.

Ambassador Francis Campbell told US diplomats that "Anglican-Vatican relations were facing their worst crisis in 150 years as a result of the Pope's decision", according to the cable dated November 30, 2009. The cable, sent to Washington, added: "The crisis is also worrisome for England's small, mostly Irish-origin, Catholic minority," Mr Campbell said.

"There is still latent anti-Catholicism in some parts of England and it may not take much to set it off. The outcome could be discrimination or in isolated cases, even violence, against this minority."

Mr Campbell was speaking to US deputy chief of mission to the Holy See, Julieta Noyes, after a recent visit to Rome by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the head of the worldwide Anglican church.

The previous month, Pope Benedict XVI had made it easier for Anglicans disaffected by moves to ordinate women and homosexual clergy to join the Roman Catholic church.

Related Coverage

Cell: Wikileaker wants a laptop

Hot topic: Dump Royals The Daily Telegraph, 1 day ago

Vatican attacks WikiLeaks sex abuse leak The Australian, 2 days ago

Papal bid for Aussie Anglicans Herald Sun, 2 days ago

New Governor looms for Victoria Herald Sun, 9 days ago

Nations 'dithered on move to expel Suva' The Australian, 1 Dec 2010 Read more at www.news.com.au

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/icbb

Former Lutheran to be Sacramento diocese's first married Catholic priest - Sacramento Living - Sacramento Food and Wine, Home, Health | Sacramento Bee

URL:  http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/12/3251484/former-luthera...

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/icb1