Archbishop of Cali Shot to Death

Colombia archbishop murdered Isaias Duarte, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Cali, was gunned down Saturday after denouncing connections between drug traffickers and leftist guerrillas. “We presume this was the work of drug traffickers,” says church official German Robledo.

Bogota-based political analyst Fernando Giraldo says it’s not terribly surprising. “When you say you have evidence, you are putting a target on your chest,” he tells the Houston Chronicle. “The archbishop knew that (traffickers) could get him.”

The city—and the rest of the country—is upset but feels helpless. “It’s sad that we have gotten so used to these kinds of crimes. Nothing really surprises me anymore,” a construction worker tells The Washington Post.

Tony Hall will leave Congress for U.N. Among politicians elected to national office, perhaps no one is more beloved by evangelical leaders than Tony Hall. Organization from Sojourners to the Christian Coalition have praised his integrity and stances (though the Christian Coalition voters guides sometimes gave him low ratings for his votes on welfare reform and other issues).

“Tony Hall is not a typical denizen of Capitol Hill,” Frederica Mathewes-Green wrote in a 1997 Christianity Today profile of the Ohio Democrat. “Compared to the other shining lights, he presents a modest display: practical, industrious, and determined. … Yet this unpretentious man could represent a model for a new way of doing politics, offering hope to Christians weary of the clumsy fit offered by current partisan alignments.”

But Tony Hall will be a denizen of Capitol Hill no longer. President Bush has nominated him to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations’ food and agriculture agencies. “It’s a job that’s right down my alley, and it’s something that I can do 100 percent of the time,” he tells the Associated Press. The AP story is worth a read if only because it serves as a reminder that politics does not necessarily corrupt. While Hall replaces George McGovern in the post, his former chief of staff, Rick Carne, will run for his seat.

Crime:

Christians condemn Gujarat massacre (Dawn, Karachi, Pakistan)
Baptist pastor accused of propositioning teen girl | Dewey “Eddie” White, pastor at the Heavenly View Full Gospel Baptist Church in Iron Station, N.C., was also convicted in 1990 of a sex crime involving another child. He denies the incident. (Associated Press)
Murder suspect accused wife of affair: pastor | B.C. children killed: Husband levelled charge just before fatal house fire (Vancouver Sun)
Church slaying case centers on suspect’s state of mind | Peter J. Troy pleads not guilty to killing priest, parishioner during Mass (The New York Times)
Also: Suspect in church shootings had bullets left, police say (The New York Times)

Church life:

Would you Adam and Eve what the word is today? | Clerics have taken to quoting from scripts rather than the scriptures to spread the gospel (Terence Blacker, The Independent, London)
Ministers on the move | Some area pastors make rounds of multiple churches (The Flint [Mich.] Journal)
Clergy remain fretful over race | Two churches change Palm Sunday service schedule (The Washington Post)
Black Catholics question closings | The Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago’s announcement Thursday that it will close four African-American churches on the South raises anew the question of how the archdiocese relates to black Catholics. (Chicago Tribune)
Pastor chosen to lead St. Luke | Kansas preacher, a past student of Holmes, will begin duties one of Dallas’ most prominent black congregations in July (The Dallas Morning News)

Billy Graham:

Cincinnati boycotters target Billy Graham | Progressive National Baptist Convention is the latest in a series of cancellations that is slowly crippling Cincinnati’s economy (The Washington Times)
The sin of sycophancy | Billy Graham’s private words recoil on him (Editorial, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Graham tape stokes anxieties | Some find lessons, others suspicion in anti-Semitic comments (The Dallas Morning News)
Nixon and the Jews. Again. | If his tirades against Jews weren’t anti-Semitism, what were they? (Slate)

Sex & marriage:

Bringing civil unions into the church | Gay couples coming to Vermont to seek civil unions are also looking toward churches there to perform them. (The New York Times)
A Latino pastor tells homosexuals that God loves them, too (Helen Ubinas, The Hartford [Conn.] Courant)
Sept. 11 leaves same-sex partners adrift | Laws bar benefits, even recognition (The Boston Globe)
Still not wanted | The U.S. military ought to stop persecuting gays and lesbians eager to serve their country at a time of crisis (Editorial, The Washington Post)
GOP adopts anti-gay agenda | The only marriage these guys want to protect is the bond between religion and politics (Jon Ralston, Las Vegas Sun)
Clerics are trapped on sex chatline | A Greek Orthodox priest who used hidden cameras to catch church staff embezzling Sunday collections and bugged a telephone line used by priests to call sex chatlines has won the U.K. Supreme Court’s approval (The Daily Telegraph, London)
Priest, wife fight over lack of sex | A battle over conjugal rights between a priest from New Eersterus in Pretoria North and his estranged wife has resulted in a low-intensity feud between his alienated family and that of his new sweetheart. (City Press, Johannesburg, South Africa)

Abuse news:

Are priests more likely to be child molesters? | Psychotherapists and scholars can offer nothing more definitive than educated opinions—and those opinions differ sharply. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Priest abuse cases focus on adolescents | The vast majority of priests who sexually abuse minors choose adolescent boys—not young children—as their targets, according to lawyers and academics who study clergy sexual abuse (The Boston Globe)
Judging credibility in abuse cases is a tough call for dioceses | The most agonizing cases pit a consistent story from a rational parishioner against a firm denial from a priest with an unimpeachable record. (The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Abuse scandal costly to church | Catholic dioceses’ settlement of claims approaches $1 billion (The Baltimore Sun)
Connecticut report revisits Egan’s role in settling abuse cases | Documents appear to show that Cardinal Edward M. Egan, while bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese in Bridgeport, Conn., allowed priests accused of sexual abuse to continue to work. (The New York Times)
Church to publish abuse report | Members of a task force formed by Cardinal Bernard Law pledged at their first meeting Saturday to produce a public report on ways to protect children from sexual abuse by priests. (Associated Press)
Church may face a grand jury | Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office will ask for information related to alleged sexual misconduct by priests in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati (The Cincinnati Post)
Former altar boy describes years of abuse, then years of silence | In 1987, Mark Vincent Serrano was paid in a court settlement not to discuss his years of sexual abuse by a New Jersey priest. Now he believes he must speak out. (The New York Times)
Worcester bishop named in lawsuits | Handling of cases vs. priests at issue (The Boston Globe)
Archdiocese defends secrecy | Church tries to assure that minors are safe from abuse (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)
Philadelphia case set a high bar in sex-abuse suits | In 1993, the state court took a hard line in a classic legal dilemma: how to balance the right of the accused to face accusers promptly against the right of victims to obtain justice. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
‘Passport’ alert for church sex offenders | Australia’s Anglican Church is to consider creating a “passport” system for staff who want to move between jobs or parishes and a blacklist of accused sex offenders, under stringent new proposals aimed at protecting children from abuse. (The Daily Telegraph, Surry Hills, NSW, Australia)
Australian Anglicans say sorry to sex abuse victims | Archbishop Carnley issued the apology on behalf of lay people and clergy from across the country (The Sydney Morning Herald)

Abuse reaction:

For Catholics, crisis of trust allayed by faith | View of hierarchy dimmed, but many back local clergy (The Washington Post)
The faithful and their faith | In the wake of pedophilia scandals, churchgoers are demanding change from the Catholic Church. (The New York Times)
As scandal keeps growing, church and its faithful reel (The New York Times)
Voices of the faithful: Support, disbelief and anger (The New York Times)
Catholics react to sex charges (Newsday)
L.A. priests anguished, angry over sex scandals | At a workshop on abuse, some say they fear to hug children. (Los Angeles Times)
Esteemed priest calls for accountability | South Pasadena parish applauds criticism of church leaders. (Los Angeles Times)

Abuse opinion:

Twisted, yes, but don’t call it shocking | For Catholic men of a certain age, the recent revelations about sexually predatory clerics are not exactly a surprise. (John Tierney, The New York Times)
Priest crisis may doom celibacy rule | Celibacy may not lead to pedophilia, but it discourages good men from becoming priests. (Susan Ager, Detroit Free Press)
A moral issue—and a crime | It shouldn’t matter whether the person having knowledge of a case of pedophilia is a neighbor, teacher, social worker or member of the clergy. There should be no immunity for sexual misconduct involving minors. (Editorial, The Washington Post)
A sacred trust | New reports about the sexual abuse of children by clergy remind us to be vigilant. (Editorial, The Baltimore Sun)
Church and state’s shared responsibility | It is a basic civil right for a child to be free from predators. We will all be judged on whether we stay true to that principle and seize the opportunity hidden within this crisis. (Thomas F. Reilly, The Boston Globe)
Signs of repentance | Not until the Catholic Church levels with the public about priests’ troubling pasts can it hope to regain the faith of its followers. (Editorial, USA Today)