c. 2005 Religion News Service
Cardinal Warns Parents About Giving Wireless Devices as Christmas Gifts
WASHINGTON (RNS) A leading Catholic cardinal is warning Catholic parents to be careful when buying iPods and other wireless devices as Christmas gifts because they could be used by minors to access pornography.
Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore, who co-chairs the Religious Alliance Against Pornography, said iPods, PDAs and video cell phones can easily send and receive pornography, much of it unsolicited.
“Sadly, unwanted pornography often leads to wanted pornography,” Keeler told members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Tuesday (Nov. 15).
Keeler urged bishops to warn pastors and parents that the devices used to download music and movies also make pornographic photos and videos more accessible, and warned of an “approaching perfect storm” that will inundate consumers with pornography.
“The technology itself is not dangerous, in fact technology in itself is good,” Keeler said. “The danger lies in the fact that there are not safeguards or regulations in place to protect children or teens from being exposed to unwanted pornography.”
Keeler spoke the same day that The Washington Post reported that users had downloaded 1 million images of naked models from one pornographic Web site within a week. The Post also reported that a wireless industry trade group is exploring rating standards to help prevent underage access to pornography.
The Cincinnati-based Religious Alliance Against Pornography was founded in 1986 by the late Cardinal John O’Connor of New York. It counts more than 50 religious and interfaith organizations as members.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
In `Historic’ Move, Britain Sends Catholic Ambassador to the Vatican
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Britain has appointed a new ambassador to the Vatican, naming the first Catholic to the post since Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534.
The appointment of Francis Campbell, 35, on Tuesday (Nov. 15) also makes him the youngest ambassador in the British diplomatic corps and the first Irish Catholic to become a British ambassador since the Republic was granted independence in 1921. Sir Roger Casesment, the last British ambassador of Irish origins, was found guilty of treason and hung in 1917.
“Francis’ appointment is truly historic,” said Joseph K. Grieboski, president of Britain’s Institute of Religion and Public Policy.
Britain and the Vatican partially restored relations in 1914, mending ties that had been severed more than 350 years ago under Henry VIII.
According to a statement released by the Archdiocese of Westminster, Protestants have held the post of ambassador to the Holy See with a Catholic serving as deputy ever since Britain established full diplomatic relations with the Vatican in 1982.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of Westminster said the appointment “has broken with the unspoken assumption that the British representative to the Holy See should not be a Catholic.”
Campbell’s appointment fills a post that has been vacant for months, stirring speculation that Britain’s interest in the Vatican was flagging. At one point, the vacant post was advertised in British newspapers _ a highly unusual form of recruitment for an ambassadorship.
A statement from Britain’s foreign office confirmed that Campbell had been selected in an unprecedented “open competition” that used newspaper advertisements to attract more than 120 applicants for the post.
Born in Newry, on the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, Campbell is seen as being close to Prime Minister Tony Blair. In 1999, he joined Blair’s elite foreign policy unit as an adviser. In 2001, he was named Blair’s Private Secretary.
Between 2003 and 2005, Campbell completed a stint in Britain’s Rome Embassy.
_ Stacy Meichtry
Poll Shows Bishops’ Image Improving Among Catholics
(RNS) A new Zogby International poll shows support for American Catholic bishops is rebounding.
Nearly two-thirds of American Catholics polled _ 64 percent _ agreed that the bishops are doing a good job. The approval rate was at its highest, at 83 percent, in fall 2001, just before the clergy sex abuse scandal emerged. Approval for bishops dropped to its lowest _ 57 percent _ in fall 2004.
“It looks to me as if it’s leveling off, but it’s nowhere (near) where it was in 2001,” said Mary MacDonald, a religious studies professor working on the Contemporary Catholic Trends survey at Le Moyne College, a Catholic school in Syracuse, N.Y., that commissioned the survey.
“The sex abuse scandal was just a big shock to people,” MacDonald said. “It’s not surprising that the ranking of the bishops fell off. Now people perhaps feel some corrective actions have been taken and things are a little better.”
Le Moyne/Zogby released the findings of the 2005 survey on Monday (Nov. 14), the first day of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops annual meeting in Washington. The Syracuse Catholic college and the Utica-based polling organization have worked together on the project since fall 2001.
The Le Moyne/Zogby survey found 89 percent of American Catholics agree their pastors are doing a good job leading the Catholic Church. The new pope, Benedict XVI, got a lower approval rating, with 75 percent agreeing he is doing a good job leading the church.
An April 2003 Le Moyne/Zogby poll found that 81 percent of respondents had a favorable impression of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II. In a poll taken April 3, a day after Pope John Paul II died, 98 percent of 888 Catholics surveyed nationwide said they had a favorable impression of John Paul II.
“Liberal Catholics may have had problems with him, but he always had a very high rating,” MacDonald said.
The survey did not include questions about last month’s three-week synod of worldwide bishops, which included discussions of liturgical and sacramental issues, celibacy and vocations. Nor did it address gay priests or women’s ordinations, two issues American Catholics have cited as crucial for the new pope.
_ Renee K. Gadoua
Business Dean of Baptist University Ousts Gay Alumnus From Board
(RNS) A Baylor University alumnus has been removed from an advisory board for the Baptist university’s business school because he is gay.
Terry Maness, dean of the Hankamer School of Business at the Waco, Texas, university, said he asked Tim Smith, 44, to step down “because of his alternative lifestyle.”
“We must be sensitive to the position of our affiliated denomination, the Baptist General Convention of Texas, which has, on previous occasions, stated that a homosexual lifestyle is incompatible with most Baptist interpretations of Scripture,” Maness said in a written statement Nov. 3.
Smith, an entrepreneur who has donated more than $65,000 to Baylor, told the San Antonio Express-News that the decision disappointed him.
The 1983 Baylor graduate, who has a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard, often lectured in entrepreneurial business classes at Baylor and had served on the advisory board for four years, the Express-News reported.
“It’s hard, because Baylor did so much for me as a student,” Smith told the newspaper from Charleston, S.C., where he recently moved to be with his partner. “I think Terry is a good man. I just think he made a mistake on this one.”
It’s just the latest situation involving gays to gain attention at Baylor.
In 2003, the university made headlines when a gay seminary student’s scholarship was rescinded. Baylor later sued the student for sending harassing e-mails to university officials, and a court ordered him to pay $77,000.
In September, a campus Starbucks at Baylor removed coffee cups because they featured a quote by writer Armistead Maupin saying that “life is too damn short” to hide being gay.
“My giving has declined in the last year or two, given the environment there,” Smith told the Express-News. “While I don’t like some of the things I have seen, I still have very deep feelings for that university.”
_ Bobby Ross Jr.
Rare Library Collection on Puritans Opened to Public
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (RNS) Believing the 17th-century Puritans have much to say to today’s Christians, the Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary has opened one of the world’s largest collections of books by and about Puritans.
Hundreds of rare, antiquarian books line the shelves of a room off the library in the small seminary. Some books date to the early 1600s.
Some were never reprinted, and only a few copies exist.
“The strength of this library is all of the antiquarian books,” said seminary President Joel Beeke, who collected most of the books, starting when he was 14 years old.
He expects researchers from around the world to take advantage of the center, which was dedicated Oct. 20.
About 2,500 volumes in all, with another 500 coming soon, surround one of the centerpieces of the valuable collection _ three rebound volumes of “The Works of William Perkins” from 1612 to 1613, one of about 200 sets in the world and once owned by famous 19th-century England preacher Charles Spurgeon.
Perkins is considered one of the fathers of Puritanism, a movement that began in the late 16th century to apply the philosophy of John Calvin to daily life. Followers, who spread from England, Scotland and the Netherlands to North America, sought to purify the church and promote holiness in Christian life and society.
Puritans have sometimes been confused with New England’s Pilgrims, who more radically separated themselves.
Puritans were more theologically advanced and tried to “bring every area of life into subjection with the glory of God,” Beeke said.
The movement faded in the early 18th century and briefly was revived in essence by Jonathan Edwards in the Great Awakening of the 1740s.
_ Ron Cammel
Quote of the Day: Southern Baptist Leader Richard Land
(RNS) “I don’t think the most damaging issue in this country is poverty, as important as the issue is. Yet not a single day has gone by in the last 32 years that I have not personally grieved and prayed for the 4,000 babies _ disproportionately African-American _ who have been aborted.”
_ Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, speaking before the Trotter Group, an association of black columnists, at its annual meeting on Nov. 8 in Nashville, Tenn. He was quoted by Baptist Press.
MO/JL END RNS
