c. 2007 Religion News Service

Inmate Wins Right to Buy Mormon Religious Texts

NEW ORLEANS (RNS) A Mormon inmate at the Louisiana State Penitentiary will be allowed to receive religious materials from certain vendors under a settlement the American Civil Liberties Union reached with state officials.

Norman Sanders, who is serving a life sentence for killing two people, is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a student in a Bible program, according to a federal lawsuit filed in July in Baton Rouge.

The prison implemented a vendor list in 2003, laying out publishers and stores from which prisoners could buy books and documents. But the list included no sellers of the scholarly religious texts Sanders wanted to buy, said Katie Schwartzmann, an ACLU staff attorney.

“Just because you are a prisoner, you don’t forfeit your First Amendment right of freedom of religion,” Schwartzmann said.

Sanders made several administrative appeals to prison officials before filing the lawsuit, Schwartzmann said.

Sanders, who also had filed a state lawsuit over the matter in the summer of 2005, received $10,950 in a settlement with the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections. He now will be allowed to receive publications from the Brigham Young University Bookstore, the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, and Deseret Book Direct.

The ACLU will receive $10,893 in attorneys’ fees and costs.

Prison Warden Burl Cain, who has made faith-based programs at the prison his hallmark, said at the time the first lawsuit was filed that Sanders had been receiving Mormon literature. He did not immediately return a call for comment.

_ Laura Maggi

Paris Nun Identified as Source of Possible John Paul Miracle

VATICAN CITY (RNS) A Roman Catholic nun who attributes her recovery from Parkinson’s disease to the miraculous intercession of the late Pope John Paul II has been identified as Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre of Paris.

The French newspaper Le Figaro disclosed the name of the 45-year-old nun, who is employed at a Paris maternity hospital, in its online edition on Wednesday (March 29). She is a member of the Congregation of Little Sisters of Catholic Motherhood in Aix-en-Provence, in southeastern France.

The nun’s purported cure from Parkinson’s, which also afflicted the late pope, is one of the primary pieces of evidence presented in the case for John Paul’s beatification, the rank just before sainthood.

Church officials have so far declined to name the nun. But the French Catholic newspaper La Croix has reported that the bishop of her home diocese of Aix-en-Provence will confirm her identity Sunday (April 1).

Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the postulator (or official advocate) for the cause of John Paul’s sainthood, announced earlier this week that the then-unnamed French nun would attend a ceremony in Rome on April 2, the second anniversary of John Paul’s death.

The ceremony at the Basilica of St. John Lateran will mark the end of an investigation into the late pope’s “life, virtues and reputation for sanctity.” The Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints will then consider the cause of John Paul’s beatification.

To qualify for beatification, a candidate must have been a martyr or have a miracle attributed to his or her intercession. If John Paul is beatified, a second miracle would be required for him to be named a saint.

In addition to the cure of Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre, the miracles reportedly proposed for attribution to John Paul include the conception of a child by a married couple who had long been infertile.

_ Francis X. Rocca

Ohio May Reject Federal Abstinence Funds

CLEVELAND (RNS) Ohio might become the eighth state to reject federal money for abstinence-only sex education, a decision that public-policy groups say is part of a nationwide shift toward more comprehensive sex-ed programs.

Gov. Ted Strickland has proposed phasing out federal grants for abstinence-only instruction, following the lead of governors in California, Connecticut, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.

A bipartisan group in Congress has introduced a bill that would pay for programs that include instruction about birth control and sexually transmitted diseases, while also emphasizing abstinence before marriage.

“The abstinence-only approach has seen its day, and the support’s really waning,” said Bill Smith, vice president for public policy at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States in Washington, D.C.

Smith and others attribute the shift away from abstinence-only instruction to new leadership in Congress.

The federal bill, the Responsible Education About Life Act, was first introduced in 2001 but gained little support in a Republican-led Congress that funneled about $175 million a year into abstinence-only programs across the country.

Some states found that the federal grant program had too many strings attached. Abstinence-only educators are asked to adhere to teaching points, including one that states that sex outside of marriage is “likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.”

Other states dropped the program after new rules banned information about contraception and STD prevention, even to answer students’ questions.

“The governor believes that continuing to pay for a program that has not been proven to work is an unwise use of tax dollars, particularly when we’re facing a very challenging or constrained budget environment,” said Keith Dailey, spokesman for the governor.

Some Ohio Republican lawmakers already have said they will fight to restore the abstinence-only money.

_ Leila Atassi

Quote of the Day: New Life Church Associate Pastor Rob Brendle

(RNS) “His loose discussions about sexuality might have seemed refreshingly raw and real, especially since church had always been so stuffy and prudish in the past. In retrospect, some of his comments and interactions that at the time seemed edgy, but innocent enough, now seem questionable.”

_ Rob Brendle, associate pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., speaking of the church’s dismissed pastor Ted Haggard, who was caught in a sex scandal last fall. He was quoted by the Los Angeles Times.

KRE/LF END RNS