c. 2006 Religion News Service

California Bishop Ordered to Counseling to Avoid Charges

(RNS) A California Catholic bishop who failed to immediately report allegations of child sex abuse will avoid criminal charges if he undergoes counseling, the Sonoma County district attorney said Monday (Nov. 20).

Bishop Daniel Walsh of Santa Rosa admitted wrongdoing in deciding to wait several days before reporting the Rev. Francisco Xavier Ochoa, a Sonoma priest now wanted on 10 counts of sexual molestation.

District Attorney Stephan Passalacqua said Walsh’s plea, in addition to his clean record, makes him eligible to enroll in a counseling diversion program. Completion of the four-month program will free Walsh of any criminal charges.

“It is clear that Bishop Walsh should have known of his obligations to immediately report the matter involving Francisco Ochoa,” Passalacqua said in a statement.

California state law requires professionals _ including clergy, teachers, doctors and therapists _ to report suspected child abuse by fax or in writing within 36 hours. Those who fail to do so are subject to up to six months in prison and a $1,000 fine.

Passalacqua said there was no reason for Walsh to wait, as the diocese receives training on such matters and had established its own protocol on the reporting law.

Ochoa, 68, is believed to have fled to Mexico about a week after admitting his sexual activities with children to several church officials. Church lawyers waited until May 1 to file the report with the county’s Child Protective Services. Some say the delay allowed Ochoa time to flee the country.

Mary Grant, the western regional director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said the district attorney’s decision was “terribly disappointing.”

“We believe the DA is being a cowardly politician instead of a courageous advocate. He had a chance to show that putting children in harm’s way is wrong,” Grant said in a statement.

_ Jason Kane

Sikhs, Security Officials Team Up for Sensitivity Training

WASHINGTON (RNS) Manjit Singh clearly remembers one occasion before a flight when he forgot to pack his kirpan _ a small religious dagger that baptized Sikhs always carry _ along with the rest of his luggage.

“The (Transportation Security Administration) official asked, `Do you have a kirpan?’ before I even mentioned that I forgot to pack it,” Singh said. “I was very surprised.”

Singh’s organization, the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Department of Homeland Security have been working to improve security procedures by becoming more sensitive to the practices of religious minorities, including the more than 500,000 Sikhs living in the U.S.

The two agencies, in an attempt to make security officials more culturally and religiously aware, on Monday (Nov. 20) released a new poster describing common Sikh head coverings and procedures for handling the kirpan.

The new poster describes Sikhism as an independent religion that “originated in South Asia during the 15th century.” It also describes the variety of head coverings and kirpans and offers advice for searching a Sikh or handling an article of faith, with the emphasis being, “Show respect.”

“The objective is to increase awareness and make such interactions positive ones (and) it’s been a success,” Singh said.

Daniel Sutherland, an officer with Homeland Security who has been working directly with the Sikh group, said the partnership has produced more than just posters.

“We provide federal law enforcement training in Georgia to about 30,000 cadets each year,” Sutherland said. “We asked if someone from the Sikh community would be available to help educate the faculty and the community was glad to help.”

Singh acknowledged the desire to aid. “It takes time, but it makes a huge difference,” he said.

_ Keith Roshangar

Government Ditches `Hunger’ Label for `Very Low Food Security’

WASHINGTON (RNS) The U.S. Department of Agriculture has decided that Americans who go without food are no longer hungry _ instead, they possess “very low food security.”

In an annual report released Nov. 15 that measures Americans’ access to food, the word “hunger” was omitted in favor of what the department has decided is the more scientifically accurate term.

The president of Bread for the World, an ecumenical Christian anti-hunger group based in Washington, blasted the department’s move as an attempt by the Bush administration to play down the reality of hunger in the U.S.

“This was a politically motivated resort to jargon in order to reduce the scandal of hunger in America,” the Rev. David Beckmann said. He said the department’s move was under the influence of an administration that does not like to acknowledge that Americans are hungry.

The Committee on National Statistics of the National Academies, an independent panel of scientific experts who made the recommendation, is defending the change in terminology, saying that hunger is a term that describes the consequences rather than the state of food security.

Because hunger is “an individual-level physiological condition that may result from food insecurity,” it must be measured on a person-to-person basis that is beyond the scope of the annual report, the committee said on the department’s Web site.

The report measures the ability of Americans to put sufficient food on the table for a healthy lifestyle. In previous years, “hunger” had been used to describe Americans at the lowest end of the measure, least able to adequately feed themselves and their families.

Critics also accused the administration of playing politics by waiting until after the Nov. 7 elections to release the report instead of putting it out, as usual, in October.

Beckmann said the new term is a “technical, bloodless word” that obscures reality, while hunger is a word that motivates people into action.

“These people who are being described as food insecure _ these people are hungry,” he said. “`Hunger’ has meaning to people. `Very low food security’ doesn’t mean anything.”

The Department of Agriculture said there were 35 million Americans in 2005 _ down from 38 million in 2004 _ who lived in households that at some point in the year were not able to put food on the table. The number of people threatened by “very low food security” was stable at 10 million after five consecutive years on the rise.

Bread for the World’s annual hunger report, released Monday (Nov. 20), found that by the third week of each month, nearly 91 percent of food stamp recipients had depleted their benefits and didn’t have enough to make it through an entire month.

“It’s clear that God cares about hungry people,” Beckmann said. “There’s nothing in the Bible about very low food security.”

_ Rebecca U. Cho

Vatican to Review Condoms, Disease Prevention

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Vatican officials are gearing up to review current policy on infectious diseases amid continuing pressure for the church to relax its ban on condom use as a form of disease prevention.

The Roman Catholic Church’s ban on condoms has been at the center of intense public and internal debate in light of the AIDS epidemic that has ravaged Africa and other parts of the developing world. Current church policy advocates abstinence as the only acceptable method for preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

On Tuesday (Nov. 21), Vatican health minister Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan announced his office would conduct a seminar Thursday through Saturday (Nov. 23-35) on whether the methods of prevention and treatment currently in use by the church’s global network of health care workers are effective.

“We will interrogate ourselves on the moral and ethical dimensions of the epidemics,” Barragan said. The Vatican banned condoms in 1968 as a form of contraception. No pope, however, has addressed the question of condoms in the context of AIDS and other infectious diseases.

Barragan did not say whether any modifications to the condom ban would be on the table, however.

In April, Barragan told the Rome newspaper La Repubblica that Pope Benedict XVI had asked his office to carefully study the issue. He did not indicate whether the Vatican ultimately intended to relax the decades-long condom ban.

“It is Benedict XVI who asked us for a study on this particular aspect of using a condom by those afflicted with AIDS and by those with infectious diseases,” Barragan was quoted as saying.

Those comments came two days after the leftist monthly L’espresso published comments by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini calling condom use a “lesser evil” when used to prevent AIDS infection. Martini, the former archbishop of Milan once considered a contender for the papacy, has been a leading voice in the liberal wing of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

_ Stacy Meichtry

British Airways Rejects Complaint Over Employee Cross Necklace

LONDON (RNS) A British Airways employee has lost her fight against the company’s ban on her openly wearing a crucifix necklace, a decision that the Church of England’s second-ranking cleric described as “nonsense.”

In rejecting her appeal on Monday (Nov. 20), the airline said check-in worker Nadia Eweida had violated the company’s dress code, which insists that such items, even if they are religious, cannot be worn if they are visible.

Eweida has said practitioners of other faiths were allowed their religious headdress, but the airline said it permitted Muslims to wear their head scarves and Sikhs their turbans because it is “not practical” to conceal them beneath their uniforms.

Archbishop John Sentamu of York, who holds the No. 2 spot in the Church of England hierarchy, said the airline’s decision in this case “is a nonsense and is based on flawed reasoning.”

“Under BA’s current reasoning,” the cleric said, “an employee who turned up to work wearing a 3-foot-long cross must be allowed to wear it, because to hide such a cross under their uniform would be impractical.”

The cross Nadia Eweida wears is about the size of a U.S. 25-cent coin.

Sentamu said the nation’s flagship airline “needs to look again at this decision and to look at the history of the country it represents, whose culture, laws, heritage and traditions owes so much to the very same symbol it would ban.”

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the British human rights organization Liberty, told reporters the airline’s policy “appears to be fundamentally misconceived and has led to a bonkers result. This woman’s cross is clearly as important to her as a turban or a hijab to someone else.”

British Airways, in an official statement, insisted that “there is no discrimination between faiths whatsoever” and that it had “offered her an alternative, non-uniformed post, in which she would be able to wear her cross,” but she had turned it down.

“If BA chose to terminate my employment,” Eweida said, “I cannot stop them. It is their prerogative.”

_ Al Webb

Quote of the Day: Gay-rights activist and author Wayne Besen

“With all he (Ted Haggard) had to lose _ a wife, children, a huge church _ he had to be who he was in the end. He couldn’t pray away the gay.”

_ Wayne Besen, a gay-rights activist and author of the book “Anything But Straight,” speaking about Ted Haggard, the former president of the National Association of Evangelicals. Besen was quoted by The Associated Press.

KRE/PH END RNS