NOTABLES - People who make the news, not necessarily Church-related

New Australian prime minister
has Catholic roots, Christian policies
By Dan McAloon
Catholic News Service



Rudd with wife Therese and sons Marcus (left) and Nicholas.


SYDNEY, Australia, Dec. 5 (CNS) - Kevin Rudd, the Catholic-born leader of Australia's Labor Party, was sworn in as Australia's prime minister Dec. 3.

Throughout a year of electoral campaigning, Rudd worked to familiarize the Australian people with how his view of Christian values informed his policies.

The youngest of a Catholic family of four children in rural Queensland, Rudd said the death of his father, a dairy farmer, from complications arising from a car accident had the greatest transforming effect on him when he was just 11 years old.

When his father died in 1969, Rudd was the only child living at home. His older brother was away in the army, his sister was a novice at a Mercy sisters' convent, and his 14-year-old brother was boarding at the Marist College Ashgrove in suburban Brisbane.

With the family evicted from their farm, Rudd recalled that he and his mother spent a night in their car before being taken in by other family members. The eviction, said Rudd, aroused "my earliest flickering of a sense of justice and injustice. ... I just thought it was plain wrong that that could happen to anybody or that you didn't have anywhere to go and stay."

While his mother retrained as a nurse, Rudd joined his older brother at the Marist boarding school. Rudd does not have happy memories of the two years he spent there and "the tough, harsh, unforgiving, institutional Catholicism" he said he found at the school.

When his mother was back on her feet, he moved back home with her and attended the local public high school.

At the Australian National University in Canberra, Rudd excelled in Chinese language and history. He met his future wife, Therese Rein, a practicing Anglican, at the university. Although he "never sought to formally separate himself from his Catholicism," Rudd married in the Anglican Church and attends Anglican services with his family.

"Families that pray together, stay together," Rudd said.

Of his disenchantment with Catholicism, he said, "It was necessary to step out of the tradition I'd grown up in, in order to reflect on it and to reflect what actually lay underneath it."

In a 2005 essay on the role of a Christian in contemporary politics, Rudd said he sees the Gospel as "an exhortation to social action," arguing that the continuing principle shaping the church's engagement with the state "should be to take the side of the marginalized, the vulnerable and the oppressed."

"Catholic social teaching," he wrote, has "long argued for a proper balance between the rights of capital and labor, in a relationship based on mutual respect as well as legal protection."

Opposing former Prime Minister John Howard's controversial Work Choices legislation, Rudd has said the Christian churches, including the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference, exposed the unfairness of Work Choices legislation as "a redistribution of power from the weak to the strong."

"This is part of the continued prophetic mission of the church however politically uncomfortable. The purpose of the church is not to be socially agreeable; it is to speak robustly to the state on behalf of those who cannot speak effectively for themselves," he said. "Decency, fairness and compassion are still etched in our national soul. Despite a decade of oxygen deprivation, Christians can breathe them afresh into the great debates now faced by our country and the international community."

Rudd and the Labor Party defeated Howard's Liberal-Nationalist Party coalition Nov. 24 and swept the Labor Party back into the federal government after nearly a dozen years in opposition.

Now buoyed by his electoral mandate, Rudd, 50, promises to repeal Work Choices. He also said he will enact a revolution in school, trades and university education in Australia and reactivate the reconciliation movement with Australia's indigenous people. He has put climate change firmly onto the federal agenda by creating a new ministerial portfolio to deal with it, as well as ratifying Australia's commitment to the Kyoto Protocol on global emissions.

Rudd also has announced that he will recall Australia's combat troops from Iraq by the middle of 2008.

By SIMON ROMERO
The New York Times
Published: December 6, 2007

CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec. 5 — President Hugo Chávez's political movement, once considered largely above internal criticism here, is being consumed by recrimination and soul-searching after his proposal to transform Venezuela into a socialist state was rejected by voters over the weekend.

Mr. Chávez, who had cordially accepted the defeat, took the offensive at a news conference on Wednesday, lashing out at his opponents, whose victory he dismissed with an obscenity. He insisted he was "not finished" with his self-declared revolution for Venezuela and would reintroduce proposed constitutional changes to augment his powers.

At the same time, he acknowledged, "This is the moment to start a real period of reflection, of self-criticism." That process had already begun to divide even his ardent supporters.

Some of Mr. Chávez's most vociferous loyalists, among them the lawmaker Iris Varela, called on him effectively to ignore the referendum results and enact some of the proposals by using the decree powers granted to him by the National Assembly this year.

But in an explicit rejection of the authoritarianism and widening cult of celebrity that characterized Mr. Chávez’s movement in the last year, others are calling for his followers to embrace a more pluralistic path.

"Chávez is a human being who makes mistakes," said Luis Tascón, a lawmaker in the National Assembly, which is controlled almost entirely by the president’s supporters, including Mr. Tascón.

"If Chavismo is to consolidate its historical relevance," Mr. Tascón, 39, said in an interview at his modest apartment here, "it has to be more than about one man."

Such a statement from within Mr. Chávez's movement would have been nearly taboo in the days before the referendum on Sunday, when accusations of treason were leveled by Mr. Chávez and senior officials against anyone who opposed the sweeping constitutional changes he had put forward. But no longer.

Dissent among Chavistas, as the president's supporters here call themselves, and former Chavistas can now be heard on the floor of the National Assembly, after the release of voting tallies that showed that the proposals had lost in Petare, La Vega and Caricuao, sprawling slums in this city that were pro-Chávez bastions a year ago.

Losing such support in such emblematic strongholds has been a shocking revelation for Chavismo, a movement that has long been centered on the president himself and that is hard to define in ideological terms.

At the start of his presidency, in 1999, Mr. Chávez imbued his nationalist thinking with adulation of Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century South American liberation hero who was born in Venezuela, combining it with measures aimed at helping the poor.

After his brief ouster in a 2002 coup Mr. Chávez tilted leftward and strengthened an alliance with Cuba. He began to describe himself as a socialist, sprinkling speeches with references to Lenin, Fidel Castro, the Italian Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci and even Jesus.

Now Mr. Chávez, 53, finds himself in the position of defending his commitment to a variety of socialism that would have abolished term limits on the president and allowed him to decree unlimited states of emergency and appoint rulers for new administrative regions, some of the proposals rejected by voters.

He reappeared on national television here on Wednesday with a barrage of verbal attacks. He was dressed in an olive drab uniform and accompanied by his military advisers. He criticized his ex-wife and the former first lady, Marisabel Rodríguez, who is now a vocal critic of his policies. He sang a brief song mocking the Colombian president, Álvaro Uribe, with whom he had a spat, claiming Mr. Uribe resembles President Bush.

Most forcefully, he lashed out against Hernán Lugo-Galicia, a journalist at the daily newspaper El Nacional who wrote an article this week claiming that the armed forces intervened on Sunday after the referendum to press Mr. Chávez to accept the results. Mr. Chávez rejected Mr. Lugo-Galicia’s reporting, calling him a "short-story teller."

Finally, Mr. Chávez said he would pursue another offensive to reform the Constitution, explaining that it might be better to have a simplified version proposed by “the people.” The original proposal of 69 amendments was conceived by Mr. Chávez and the National Assembly.

Some of Mr. Chávez's supporters say they would back another attempt to overhaul the Constitution. But others are seeking to review what went wrong before proposals are put forward again. Aporrea, the country’s most influential pro-Chávez blog, has been filled with entries this week on the different views.

Of those, one of the most withering critiques of the president's movement came from Heinz Dieterich, a political scientist based in Mexico who has been one of Chavismo's leading theorists in recent years.

Chavismo, Mr. Dieterich argued, was suffering from a rubber-stamp National Assembly and cabinet, a callous new political class, a presidential staff comprising sycophants and an aversion to serious debate over pressing issues like inflation, which surged 4.4 percent in November.

If Mr. Chávez does not accept a greater role for others in decision-making, Mr. Dieterich warned, "He will destroy the process he has helped to construct."

"It is not only certain the saying that revolutions devour their children, but also that revolutionary leaders, when they convert themselves into unilateral conductors, devour their revolutions," Mr. Dieterich said.

Much of the internal criticism among the Chavistas has to do with Mr. Chávez's efforts to forge a single Socialist party among his followers. He began this project after winning a re-election bid last year, but critics questioned whether its leaders would use the party to stifle dissent.

Some of those fears have materialized. Mr. Tascón, for instance, was expelled from the United Socialist Party of Venezuela on the eve of Sunday's vote after voicing his opinion regarding a top military official who broke with Mr. Chávez last month.

Other Chavistas claim the party's leadership, many of whom lead privileged lives, has grown out of touch with the president's base of support in the slums and impoverished countryside.

"Many of those who led the yes campaign are so bureaucratic that it was impossible for them to convince the Chavista base to vote yes," said Stalin Pérez Borges, a union leader.


SOURCE: www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/world/americas/06venez.html?hp

Iraq's new cardinal holds first mass



ARBIL, Iraq, Dec. 7(AFP) - Prelate Emmanuel III Delly has held his first mass since being made a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI, drawing an overflowing crowd to a small church in northern Iraq.

Worshippers greeted him with applause and chanting when he entered the Mar Yusef (Saint Joseph) church in the Christian town of Ainkawa near Arbil, capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, late on Wednesday.

"With a heart filled with happiness, I am greeting you on returning from the Catholic capital, Rome," Delly said.

"Pope Benedict XVI told me that he is praying for Iraq. He said to me, 'I am praying for the Iraqis and wish that peace, love and brotherhood unite them into one Iraqi family'," he added.

Delly, the 80-year-old patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldean Catholic Church, which is the largest Christian denomination in Iraq and is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. He was among 23 clerics made cardinal on November 24.

The pope made a point during the ceremony that by elevating Delly he sought to show in a "concrete way my spiritual closeness and affection" for Iraqi Christians.

Wednesday's mass lasted two hours and because the church was so full, a big screen was put up in the yard outside to show the ceremony live.

"We are very happy to partake in the mass directly with the cardinal after he was elevated," said Shamael Sami, a Baghdad resident who fled violence in the capital and is now living in the Kurdish north with his wife and two-year-old son.

"I want peace to prevail in Iraq so that we can go back to our homes," he added.

"This is a great occasion," said Toma Ishaq, an Ainkawa resident. "The post of cardinal is important for all Iraqis and we are happy that the cardinal chose Ainkawa to hold his first mass since his elevation."

Following Cardinal Delly's return from Rome on Tuesday, many delegations from government, political parties and religious groups have been to Mar Yusef church to congratulate him.

Iraq's new cardinal holds first mass



ARBIL, Iraq, Dec. 7(AFP) - Prelate Emmanuel III Delly has held his first mass since being made a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI, drawing an overflowing crowd to a small church in northern Iraq.

Worshippers greeted him with applause and chanting when he entered the Mar Yusef (Saint Joseph) church in the Christian town of Ainkawa near Arbil, capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, late on Wednesday.

"With a heart filled with happiness, I am greeting you on returning from the Catholic capital, Rome," Delly said.

"Pope Benedict XVI told me that he is praying for Iraq. He said to me, 'I am praying for the Iraqis and wish that peace, love and brotherhood unite them into one Iraqi family'," he added.

Delly, the 80-year-old patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldean Catholic Church, which is the largest Christian denomination in Iraq and is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. He was among 23 clerics made cardinal on November 24.

The pope made a point during the ceremony that by elevating Delly he sought to show in a "concrete way my spiritual closeness and affection" for Iraqi Christians.

Wednesday's mass lasted two hours and because the church was so full, a big screen was put up in the yard outside to show the ceremony live.

"We are very happy to partake in the mass directly with the cardinal after he was elevated," said Shamael Sami, a Baghdad resident who fled violence in the capital and is now living in the Kurdish north with his wife and two-year-old son.

"I want peace to prevail in Iraq so that we can go back to our homes," he added.

"This is a great occasion," said Toma Ishaq, an Ainkawa resident. "The post of cardinal is important for all Iraqis and we are happy that the cardinal chose Ainkawa to hold his first mass since his elevation."

Following Cardinal Delly's return from Rome on Tuesday, many delegations from government, political parties and religious groups have been to Mar Yusef church to congratulate him.

Romney: No Religious Test for President

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Dec. 6 (AP) - Republican Mitt Romney, confronting voters' skepticism about his Mormon faith, declared Thursday that as president he would "serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause," and said calls for him to explain and justify his religious beliefs go against the profound wishes of the nation's founders.

At the same time, he decried those who would remove from public life "any acknowledgment of God," and he said that "during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places."

In a speech less than a month before the first nomination contests, Romney said he shares "moral convictions" with Americans of all faiths, though surveys suggest up to half of likely voters have qualms about electing the first Mormon president.

"I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it," Romney said. "My faith is the faith of my fathers. I will be true to them and to my beliefs."

Nonetheless, he strove to clarify his personal line between church and state, recalling a similar speech delivered by John F. Kennedy in 1960 as Kennedy sought to become the first Catholic elected president.

"I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith, nor should he be rejected because of his faith," Romney said at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, 90 miles from Kennedy's speaking site in Houston.

"Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin," Romney said.

He added: "If I am fortunate to become your president, I will serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause and no one interest. A president must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States."

Romney's speech lasted about 20 minutes and was interrupted a dozen times by applause from the invited audience. He said the word "Mormon" only once, otherwise referring to "my religion,""my faith" and "my church."

He hoped the speech would allay concerns of Christian conservatives, some of whom have propelled former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to join him atop the polls in Iowa. Its caucuses kick off presidential voting next month.

Romney said he is often asked whether he believes in Jesus Christ.

"I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind," he said. While conceding Mormons have different beliefs about the earthly presence of Jesus Christ, "each religion has its own unique doctrines and history. ... Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree."

Illustrating Romney's challenge, one of his own invited guests said he believes Mormons are not Christians.

"I don't think his Mormonism is a deal breaker for most Americans, but only Mitt Romney can close the deal," Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, told ABC's "Good Morning America." Asked directly if he thought Mormons were Christians, Land said, "No, I do not."

Huckabee, who was a Southern Baptist preacher before entering politics, said that Romney's religion has no bearing on whether he would make a good president.

"It has nothing to do with what faith a person has - it's whether or not that person's life is consistent with how he lives it," Huckabee said Thursday on NBC's "Today.""If I had actions that were completely opposite of my Christian faith, then I would think people would have reason to doubt if this part of my life, which is supposed to be so important, doesn't influence me."

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, also used the occasion to sound a call for greater religious thought in daily civic life, providing a near-history lesson as he recalled religion in American political life since the country's founding.

"The founders proscribed the establishment of a state religion, but they did not countenance the elimination of religion from the public square," he said.

In an appeal to social conservatives, he also invited James Bopp Jr., an anti-abortion activist who is Romney's special adviser on life issues.

Political foes have accused Romney of switching his positions on some social issues, like abortion, when it became expedient.


Former President Bush introduced Romney, heightening public attention to the speech. Romney's backdrop on stage was 10 American flags and a replica of the presidential seal.

Serving as host at his presidential library, the elder Bush introduced Romney, pointed out members of the candidate's family in the audience and described Romney's father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, as the father of volunteerism.

"He's certainly one of my mentors when it comes to points of light," said Bush, who enacted a volunteer initiative while president, called "Thousand Points of Light." Bush said he had no intention of endorsing a candidate. "I simply have too much respect for all of the candidates," he said. He called Romney a "good man" and said he considered him and his wife "good friends."

At the outset, Bush joked that Romney "brought enough family 'cause he thought we couldn't fill the place, I think."

At the conclusion of the speech, Romney's wife of 38 years, Ann, four of their five sons and several daughters-in-law joined him on stage.

Beyond speaking about faith, Romney sought to use the publicity his speech generated to relaunch his campaign as the broader electorate begins to tune into his nomination fight against a field that includes former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Striking a family chord, Romney's wife of 38 years, Ann, and four of the couple's five sons joined him for the speech.

"We are a long way from perfect and we have surely stumbled along the way, but our aspirations, our values, are the self-same as those from the other faiths that stand upon this common foundation," Romney said. "And these convictions will indeed inform my presidency."

While Romney has been subject to some leafletting and phone calling pointing to religious differences between his faith and others, he has faced little religious bigotry or questions on the campaign trail. Instead, political realities played a role in his decision to make the speech.

In an AP-Yahoo poll last month, half said they had some problems supporting a Mormon presidential candidate, including one-fifth who said it would make them very uncomfortable.

Fifty-six percent of white evangelical Christians - a major portion of likely participants in the early GOP presidential contests in Iowa and South Carolina - expressed reservations about a Mormon candidate. Among non-evangelicals, 48 percent said it troubled them. Almost a quarter - 23 percent - of evangelicals said they were very uncomfortable with the idea.

Alexei-II says European civilization doomed
if does not preserve Christian values

Moscow, December 6, Interfax - If European nations abandon their Christian roots, they are doomed to disappear from the historical arena, Patriarch Alexei II of Moscow and All Russia said.

"Modern Europe will not create a new post-Christian culture and civilization but will simply vanish from history," Alexei said at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow on Wednesday evening.

"Losing their Christian roots, the people of Europe will sign their own death warrant," he said.

Alexei recalled that he talked about "the need to preserve moral Christian values," without which "it is hard to imagine European culture and Europe itself," in his speech at the PACE in October this year.

Vatican ambassador nomination
finds opposition
BY ROBERT NOVAK
Chicago Sun-Times Columnist
December 7, 2007


President Bush's nomination of Harvard Law School professor Mary Ann Glendon as U.S. ambassador to the Vatican is being held up in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raising the possibility that the post may be vacant when Pope Benedict XVI visits the United States in April.

The selection of anti-abortion advocate Glendon is opposed by Catholics for a Free Choice. No official holds on her confirmation have been filed, but failure to schedule a hearing blocks her confirmation. She is caught up in blanket Democratic opposition to Bush's final nominees.

Business tycoon Francis Rooney, current ambassador to the Holy See, has resigned and is expected to be gone by the time of the pope's American visit.

Mormon in America
By PEGGY NOONAN
Wall Street Journal
December 8, 2007


Romney and his wife Ann, with former President George H.W. Bush
and his wife Barbara. Romney and Ann have been married for 38 years and have five sons.


Did Mitt Romney have to give a speech on religion? Yes. When you're in a race so close you could lose due to one issue, your Mormonism, you must address the issue of your Mormonism. The only question was timing: now, in the primaries, or later, as the nominee? But could he get to the general without The Speech? Apparently he judged not. (Mr. Romney's campaign must have some interesting internal polling about Republicans on the ground in places like Iowa and elsewhere.)

But Mr. Romney had other needs, too. His candidacy needed a high-minded kick start. It needed an Act II. He's been around for a year, he's made his first impression, he needed to make it new again. He seized the opportunity to connect his candidacy to something larger and transcendent: the history of religious freedom in America. He made a virtue of necessity.

He had nothing to prove to me regarding his faith or his church, which apparently makes me your basic Catholic. Catholics are not his problem. His problem, a Romney aide told me, had more to do with a particular fundamentalist strain within evangelical Protestantism.

Bill Buckley once said he'd rather be governed by the first thousand names in the Boston phone book than the Harvard faculty. I'd rather be governed by Donny and Marie than the Washington establishment.

Mormons have been, in American history, hardworking, family-loving citizens whose civic impulses have tended toward the constructive. Good enough for me. He's running for president, not pastor. In any case his faith is one thing about Mr. Romney I haven't questioned.

It is true that some in his campaign thought a speech risky, but others saw it as an opportunity, and a first draft was ready last March. In certain ways Mr. Romney had felt a tugging resistance: "I've been in public life - served as governor, run the Olympics, run a business. I have to do a speech saying my faith won't distort my leadership?

In May he decided to do it, but timing was everything. His campaign wanted to do it when he was on the ascendancy, not defensively but from a position of strength. In October they decided to do the speech around Thanksgiving. Mr. Romney gathered together all the material and began to work in earnest. Then they decided it would get lost in the holiday clutter. They decided to go after Thanksgiving, but before Dec. 15. The rise of Mike Huckabee, according to this telling, didn't force this decision but complicated it.

The campaign fixed on Dec. 6, at the College Station, Texas, library of George H.W. Bush, with the former president introducing him, which would lend a certain imprimatur (and mute those who say his son's White House is pulling for Rudy Giuliani).

It is called his JFK speech, but in many ways JFK had it easier than Mr. Romney does now. The Catholic Church was the single biggest Christian denomination in America, representing 30% of the population (Mormons: 2%, six million). Americans who had never met a Catholic in 1920 had by 1960 fought side by side with them in World War II and sat with them in college under the GI bill.

JFK had always signaled that he held his faith lightly, not with furrow-browed earnestness. He had one great question to answer: Would he let the Vatican control him? As if. And although some would vote against him because he was Catholic, some would vote for him for the same reason, and they lived in the cities and suburbs of the industrial states.

Mr. Romney gave the speech Thursday morning. How did he do?

Very, very well. He made himself some history. The words he said will likely have a real and positive impact on his fortunes. The speech's main and immediate achievement is that foes of his faith will now have to defend their thinking, in public. But what can they say to counter his high-minded arguments? "Mormons have cooties"?

Romney reintroduced himself to a distracted country - Who is that handsome man saying those nice things? - while defending principles we all, actually, hold close, and hold high.

His text was warmly cool. It covered a lot of ground briskly, in less than 25 minutes. His approach was calm, logical, with an emphasis on clarity. It wasn't blowhardy, and it wasn't fancy. The only groaner was, "We do not insist on a single strain of religion - rather, we welcome our nation's symphony of faith." It is a great tragedy that there is no replacement for that signal phrase of the 1980s, "Gag me with a spoon."

Beyond that, the speech was marked by the simplicity that accompanies intellectual confidence.

At the start, Mr. Romney was nervous and rushed, his voice less full than usual. He settled down during the second applause, halfway though the text - "No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes president he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths." From that moment he was himself.

He started with a full JFK: "I am an American running for president. I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith, nor should he be rejected because of his faith."

No "authorities of my church" or any church, will "ever exert influence" on presidential decisions.

"Their authority is theirs," within the province of the church, and it ends "where the affairs of the nation begin."

"I will put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law."

He pledged to serve "no one religion, no one group, no one cause, and no one interest."

He will not disavow his religion. "My faith is the faith of my fathers. I will be true to them and to my beliefs."

Bracingly: "Some believe that such a confession of my faith will sink my candidacy. If they are right, so be it."

Whatever our faith, the things we value - equality, obligation, commitment to liberty - unite us.

In a passage his advisers debated over until the night before the speech, Mr. Romney declared: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind." He made the call. Why? I asked the aide. "Because it's what he thinks."

At the end, he told a story he had inserted just before Thanksgiving. During the dark days of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, someone suggested the delegates pray. But there were objections: They all held different faiths.

"Then Sam Adams rose, and said he would hear a prayer from anyone of piety and good character, as long as they were a patriot. And so together they prayed."

At this point in Mr. Romney's speech, the roused audience stood and applauded, and the candidate looked moved.

There was one significant mistake in the speech. I do not know why Romney did not include nonbelievers in his moving portrait of the great American family. We were founded by believing Christians, but soon enough Jeremiah Johnson, and the old proud agnostic mountain men, and the village atheist, and the Brahmin doubter, were there, and they too are part of us, part of this wonderful thing we have.

Why did Mr. Romney not do the obvious thing and include them? My guess: It would have been reported, and some idiots would have seen it and been offended that this Romney character likes to laud atheists. And he would have lost the idiot vote.

My feeling is we've bowed too far to the idiots. This is true in politics, journalism, and just about everything else.


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Catholic leaders respond
to Mitt Romney’s faith speech



Romney campaigning in Iowa yesterday.


CNA STAFF, Dec 7, 2007 (CNA).- Mitt Romney’s speech on his Mormon faith was meant to clear the air about its impact on his potential leadership as president of the United States. In an effort to determine if that was the case, CNA contacted some influential Catholic leaders to hear their assessment of Romney’s speech.

"There was a lot to like in Governor Romney's speech, particularly his clear understanding that the alternative to today's vibrantly religious public square is not a naked public square but state-enforced secularism - the establishment of secularism, if you will,” Catholic author and scholar George Weigel told CNA.

One portion of the presidential candidate’s speech that resounded with Catholic intellectual and author George Weigel was Romney’s attack on secularism.

Speaking about those who advocate for the separation of church and state “way beyond its original meaning,” Romney claimed that “they are intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism.”

Another highlight for Weigel was “the governor's understanding that the 'no establishment' provision of the Constitution was meant to serve the end of free exercise of religion.”

Weigel summarized his thoughts to the speech saying, “[t]here were a number of clumsy formulations in the speech, but given the complexities of the subject and the demands of politics, it was an impressive and heartening performance."

Catholic League president, Bill Donahue, took a different view of Romney’s explanation of the interplay between faith and politics. “The timing is suspect, as soon as his [poll] numbers started going south and Huckabee’s started going north, he decided to make the speech,” Mr. Donahue told CNA.

“He’s just trying to get back in the news, and it worked, for a day,” said Donahue.

When asked if he thought Romney’s speech added anything substantial to the discussion about the role of faith in politics, Donahue said, “it’s apple pie, it doesn’t add anything new [to the discussion] that everyone doesn’t already know.”

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver took a different view of the Republican candidate’s speech on his faith. In an e-mail to the Denver Post he wrote that, "...In some ways, it's the speech John Kennedy should have given in Houston, but didn't.”

"Romney, unlike Kennedy in Houston, does not separate his faith from informing his citizenship, and by extension, his vision of public service," he wrote. "Romney, offered a more reasonable and fruitful explanation of how faith actually works in public service, regardless of one's political party,” the archbishop explained.

Archbishop Chaput also added further comment on the role on the role of religion in politics saying, "Religious officials shouldn't and can't determine public policy. No sensible person would disagree with that. But that's very different from claiming — as some people now do — that religious believers, communities and leaders should be silent in public debate or stay out of public issues."

While none of the Catholic leaders offered their endorsement of Romney, both Donahue and Chaput mentioned that they see his Mormon faith as a non-issue.

Their comments on his Mormon faith are well summarized by Archbishop Chaput: "Catholics, like most other people, want to elect someone who has the skills, the moral character and the real commitment to the common good that will enable him or her to lead.”

By Adam Tanner
Reuters

FRESNO, California (Reuters) - An entire California diocese of the U.S. Episcopal Church voted to secede on Saturday in a historic split after years of disagreement over the church's expanding support for gay and women's rights.

Clergy and lay representatives of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, based in Fresno in central California, voted to leave the church, which has been in turmoil since 2003 when U.S. Episcopalians consecrated their first openly gay bishop.

"We've seen a miracle here today," Bishop John-David Schofield said after the vote. "We are already outside the jurisdiction of the Episcopal Church."

The head of the U.S. Episcopal Church, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, said the church had received word of the decision "with sadness."

"We deeply regret their unwillingness or inability to live within the historical Anglican understanding of comprehensiveness," she said in a statement.

There are about 2.4 million members of the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of the 77-million-member global Anglican Communion, as the worldwide church is called.

Delegates voted 173-22 for secession, far more than the two-thirds majority needed. They later voted to align the 8,800-member diocese with the conservative Anglican Church of the Southern Cone, based in South America.

Amid the dissent of recent years, the Episcopal Church said 32 of its 7,600 congregations had left, with 23 others voting to leave but not taking the final step.

San Joaquin, with 47 churches in 14 counties, is the first of the church's 110 dioceses to complete the split.

Last year it voted overwhelmingly at its annual convention to split with the U.S. church, but held off on a final decision until Saturday's meeting.

Divisions and schisms have plagued Christianity since its earliest days, but the airing of differences through the media and Internet on hot-button social issues such as gay rights and the role of women have given prominence to disputes once debated behind closed doors.

In recent years, the Episcopal Church has faced dissent over the consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire and the blessing of gay unions practiced in some congregations.

There is also disagreement over the role of women. San Joaquin is one of only three U.S. dioceses that do not consecrate female priests.

DISPROPORTIONATE INFLUENCE

The Episcopal Church represents less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, yet its members have long had a disproportionate influence on American political and societal life.

Founding Fathers such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson went to Episcopal churches. In the 20th century, U.S. presidents Franklin Roosevelt, George Bush, the father of the current president, and Gerald Ford were Episcopalians.

Dioceses in Pittsburgh and Fort Worth, Texas, have also taken preliminary votes to leave, but their final decisions are a year away.

"They are going to be watching this quite closely to see what the Episcopal Church does," said Rev. Ian Douglas, a professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "I don't see this as suddenly becoming a landslide."

Schofield said he hoped others would follow San Joaquin's lead.

"This will give encouragement to dioceses that want to go but haven't had the courage to make that first step," the bishop said.

A few liberal parishes within the diocese are expected to stay with the church.

"It's a giant step toward the past," said the Rev. Charles Ramsden, a vice president of the church-owned Church Pension Group, who was a nonvoting observer. "It's about property, it's about millions of dollars and it's about power."

Both sides are prepared for a protracted and expensive legal battle over church assets and other issues.


SOURCE: www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0733994720071208?sp=true

Cardinal Egan's retirement
would be a first for New York
By GARY STERN
Lower Hudson Online
December 8, 2007



The 2.5 million Catholics of the Archdiocese of New York may soon witness something that their parents, grandparents and immigrant great-grandparents never did: the retirement of an archbishop.

The archdiocese will turn 200 in April, but all 11 of its previous leaders - bishops and later archbishops - have died in office (even if the first never actually touched American soil).

Cardinal Edward Egan does not appear likely to join them.

Egan turned 75 in April and submitted his formal retirement papers to the Vatican, leaving his future in the hands of Pope Benedict XVI.

Observers within and without the archdiocese believe Benedict will accept Egan's retirement and appoint a new archbishop at some point in the next year, possibly in early 2008 or after the bicentennial and the pope's visit to New York in April.

"We don't know when it will be," said Egan's spokesman, Joseph Zwilling. "Whatever the Holy Father wants is what Cardinal Egan wants. He will do whatever the Holy Father asks of him."

Egan is not likely to go far, whenever retirement comes, Zwilling said.

"He expects he will stay somewhere in New York," he said. "He will be the first to admit that he's a city boy."

Benedict and his advisers in the Vatican may be in the process of trying to answer two related questions in regard to the future of the Archdiocese of New York: When should Egan retire? And who should replace him as archbishop?

Or the questions may already be answered.

Bishops and archbishops who lead dioceses - known as ordinaries - rarely retired before Vatican II. Archbishop of Melbourne Daniel Mannix, for instance, died in 1963 at 99 after serving for 46 years.

But canon law was amended in 1966 to set 75 as the age when bishops submit retirement papers.

As far as Egan's retirement date, the pope may consider many factors, including Egan's desires, the needs of the archdiocese and the availability of his top choice for successor, said Monsignor Ronny Jenkins, a canon lawyer and associate general secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Detroit's Cardinal Adam Maida is still serving even though he turned 75 in March 2005.

"It's basically up to the pope," Jenkins said.

Although there are several possible scenarios, most observers believe a successor will be named when Egan's retirement is announced.

"I would be willing to put money down that's how it will happen in New York," said the Rev. Thomas Reese, author of "Inside the Vatican."

The process for choosing a successor is more or less managed by the apostolic nuncio to the U.S., Archbishop Pietro Sambi. It is his job to consult with the movers and shakers in the American Catholic hierarchy and to submit three names, ranked by preference, to the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops.

The congregation vets the names and makes a recommendation to the pope.

At this moment, few people know where the process stands.

"The whole thing is done very secretively," Reese said. "If there is a consensus among the American cardinals, the nuncio and the Congregation for Bishops, it can go very smoothly and rapidly. If there's disagreement, it can go slowly."

Once the decisions are made and an announcement comes, the transfer of power is a simple affair. A papal document, a bull, naming the new archbishop will be presented to the archdiocese's consultors, a group of priests who have certain administrative responsibilities.

"When they acknowledge the authenticity of the bull, the power is transferred with that act," said Monsignor Robert Trisco, professor emeritus of theology and religious studies at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

Egan will become archbishop emeritus and temporary administrator of the archdiocese, while his successor will become archbishop designate.

A Mass will be scheduled at St. Patrick's Cathedral, where the new archbishop will be officially installed. At that time, Sambi will read aloud the papal bull, walk the new archbishop to the cathedra, or bishop's seat, and hand him his crozier, the bishop's staff.

A new era will begin for the Archdiocese of New York.

And Egan, a cardinal for life, will have no defined role whatsoever in the archdiocese. Then what?

"When a bishop retires, he is free to pursue whatever interests he would like to pursue," said Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.

She would know. Washington has seen several retired archbishops come and go in recent years.

Today, as Archbishop Donald Wuerl runs things, Archbishop Emeritus Cardinal Theodore McCarrick uses Washington as his home base as he travels the world to promote religious freedom. Another former archbishop, Cardinal William Baum, who left in 1990 to serve in the Vatican, also spends part of his retirement in Washington.

The role of former archbishops often depends on their relationship with the current archbishop.

Reese noted that Wuerl and McCarrick have an excellent relationship, which was on display at a recent dinner for which McCarrick was master of ceremonies.

"It takes a very humble man like Wuerl, who was in the audience, to allow his predecessor to kind of upstage him," Reese said. "But he doesn't have a big ego."

In Baltimore, where Archbishop Edwin O'Brien was installed Oct. 1, newly retired Cardinal William Keeler has said he plans to continue working on Catholic relations with other religious communities, a longtime passion.

Egan will retain numerous responsibilities to Vatican institutions. He is a member of one of the Vatican's top courts, the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, as well as the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, the Council of Cardinals for the Study of the Organizational and Economic Concerns of the Holy See, and other bodies.

As far as New York goes, Egan has no clear plans, Zwilling said.

"He is looking forward to confirmations, visiting parishes and giving some of those talks he's always asked to give, but declines because he doesn't like leaving the archdiocese," he said.

"If he was given the opportunity to teach somewhere, I think he would love it."

Other New York bishops came close to retiring.

Bishop John Dubois, who led the diocese during the early 1800s, was very ill for the last three years of his life and pretty much turned over control to Bishop John Hughes, who would ultimately replace him.

"Technically, Dubois wasn't retired - just incapacitated," said Monsignor Thomas Shelley of Fordham University, the author of a forthcoming history of the archdiocese.

Cardinal John O'Connor was all but ready to retire when he became ill in his late 70s. A spacious office for his retirement was all set on the grounds of St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers.

But he died as archbishop in 2000.

Had O'Connor not gotten sick, he may well have cast a large shadow in New York during his retirement.

"I think it would have been very difficult to follow John O'Connor if John O'Connor was alive and well," said Christopher Bellitto, a church historian at Kean University in Union, N.J.

Even if Egan does become the first archbishop of New York to retire, he figures to join his predecessors at some point. Each of the eight late archbishops, six of them cardinals, are entombed in a crypt beneath the altar of St. Patrick's Cathedral.

In above photo, the Vatican Ambassador to Iraq Francis Joulikat, second, from left, and Archbishop Shilaymon Wardoni, right, jin Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly to cut a cake after a Mass celebrated at the Miriam Church in Palestine Street in east Baghdad, Iraq, on Sunday, Dec. 9, 2007. Some 250 Catholic faithful attended.
(AP Photos/Khalid Mohammed)


Baghdad Christians Celebrate Sunday Mass
By SAMEER N. YACOUB

BAGHDAD, Dec. 10 (AP) — The worshippers were searched at the door and snipers stood guard on the roof, but Sunday's Mass was a joyful one for more than 200 Iraqis who packed a church in eastern Baghdad to see the first Iraqi cardinal.

Under heavy guard and broadcast live on Iraqi state television, the service was capped by a handshake from a visiting Shiite imam — a symbolic show of unity between Iraq's majority Muslim sect and its tiny Christian community.

Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, leader of the ancient Chaldean Church, celebrated the two-hour Mass three weeks after Pope Benedict XVI elevated him to the top ranks of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

Delly presided over other services this week in Baghdad and the northern Kurdish city of Irbil, spreading his message of unity and forgiveness among Iraq's Christians.

"We are of one family, everyone should work for the progress of this country," he said during his sermon.

The frequent target of Islamic extremists, Iraq's Christians have been forced to flee by the tens of thousands or to isolate themselves in barricaded neighborhoods if they choose to remain.

"We pray today for the sake of each other and to forgive each other, as well to be directed to do good deeds," Delly said. "That is my demand for the Iraqis, moreover I urge the return home for displaced people and immigrants to their ancestral land."

Delly, 80, has been outspoken in the past about the need to protect Christians, who comprise less than 3 percent of Iraq's 26 million people.

Many people who filled the pews at the elegant brick Church of the Virgin Mary said they were taking advantage of a lull in violence to attend services and to congratulate Delly. The imam of a nearby Shiite mosque shook hands with him in the church's courtyard after the service.

"I came here to show the unity of the Iraqi people," said the black-turbaned imam, Jassim al-Jazairi. "We are happy with the cardinal. We are very proud of any person, whether Christian or Muslim, who raises the name of Iraq in the international arena."

The high attendance at the church in mainly Shiite eastern Baghdad was among several recent signs of normalcy in Iraq. Still, the security situation remains fragile in the city, where many Iraqis are still afraid to venture outside the concrete barriers erected by the U.S. military to protect volatile communities.

In a reminder of the dangers, armed policemen wearing helmets and blue uniforms were stationed on the church's roof and others searched worshippers walking toward the stately brick building on Palestine Street, a major thoroughfare in eastern Baghdad. Several police pickup trucks and Iraqi armored vehicles blocked the street.

Church officials said the weekly afternoon Mass has been more crowded and was extended by an hour as Iraqis are less fearful about being out on the streets late in many areas of the capital.

"We are proud of this," said Hibba Nasser, a 26-year-old housewife. "We came here to this church in order to tell the terrorists that we are not afraid of them."

Risk Taking Is in His Genes
By MARTIN FACKLER
The New York Times
Published: December 11, 2007



Masafumi Yamamoto for The New York Times


KYOTO, Japan — Inspiration can appear in unexpected places. Dr. Shinya Yamanaka found it while looking through a microscope at a friend’s fertility clinic.

Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Japan and others have turned adult skin cells into human embryonic stem cells, without using an embryo.

Dr. Yamanaka was an assistant professor of pharmacology doing research involving embryonic stem cells when he made the social call to the clinic about eight years ago. At the friend’s invitation, he looked down the microscope at one of the human embryos stored at the clinic. The glimpse changed his scientific career.

“When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters,” said Dr. Yamanaka, 45, a father of two and now a professor at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences at Kyoto University. “I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.”

After years of searching, and at times almost giving up in despair, Dr. Yamanaka may have found that alternative. Last month, his was one of two groups of researchers that independently announced they had successfully turned adult skin cells into the equivalent of human embryonic stem cells without using an actual embryo. The other group was led by James A. Thomson at the University of Wisconsin, one of the first scientists to isolate human embryonic stem cells.

Dr. Yamanaka had previously demonstrated this technique in mice, after which other scientists also began pursuing it in human cells. His mouse finding was hailed as a breakthrough because it offered a possible way around the thorny moral issues that have slowed the study of stem cells.

Stem cells, sort of all-purpose cells that briefly appear in new embryos, hold the promise of aiding research into now incurable diseases and tantalizing new medical treatments, like growing replacement tissues for patients. But their use has provoked strong objections because, until now, the cells could be obtained only by destroying human embryos. [The statement is wrong. Adult stem cells had already been researched for some time, except that embryo stem-cell research was getting all the attention.]

Dr. Yamanaka is widely credited with being the first to hit on the idea of reprogramming adult cells to behave as stem cells because of his mouse work. The crux of his idea was to add genes called master regulators to the skin cells’ chromosomes. These genes can change the cell’s behavior by turning other genes on and off.

The finding has been welcomed in the United States, where the federal government has refused to finance much stem cell research. But it is also being hailed in his native Japan for an additional reason: as a sign that the country may finally be coming of age as a center of scientific research. In recent decades, Japan has been trying to reverse its decades-old image as strong in making gadgets but weak in basic science.

“This is the first time that medical-related research of world importance has been done entirely in Japan,” said Dr. Hitoshi Niwa of the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe. “No one thought before of making stem cells this way. It is a totally new direction.”

Blazing his own path seems to come naturally to Dr. Yamanaka, who has a reputation at his university for being a bit of a creative eccentric.

Tall and trim, Dr. Yamanaka has a boyish face and a penchant for casual attire that give him the air of a graduate student. He often sprinkles jokes into his talks, an American flourish that is less common in Japanese academia. Students also mention his fondness for sports, saying they frequently spot him doing laps at a campus pool or jogging along the river.

A self-admitted workaholic, Dr. Yamanaka routinely puts in 12- to 16-hour days. He is known on campus for refusing to join colleagues for lunch, choosing to eat by himself so he can keep working. He is also known for being demanding but personable to his research staff of 25, mostly university students and post-doctoral researchers.

Success has brought Dr. Yamanaka a taste of celebrity, which he seems to have not entirely welcomed. Since he announced his finding, a steady stream of domestic news media have marched through his office and two crammed laboratories at Kyoto University. In an interview in his office, he showed an edge of impatience in saying he was tired of all the attention because it pulled him away from his research.

When asked the source of his success, Dr. Yamanaka said it was his willingness to take risks. His career has in fact been unorthodox by Japanese standards. While many scientists here spend entire careers in the rigid academic world, Dr. Yamanaka began his professional life in medical school, where he trained to become an orthopedic surgeon.

He said his interest in orthopedics came from experiences growing up in the western city of Osaka, where he made frequent visits to the doctor for bones fractured by rugby and judo. But he chose research over medical practice because of the freedom it affords, both to take risks and follow whims — something he could not do treating patients.

“I like the freedom of research,” he said. “Plus, if I fail in science, I know I can always survive because I have an M.D. This has been my insurance policy.”

Dr. Niwa and others said one of Dr. Yamanaka’s biggest achievements was not only the idea to use reprogramming, but also the speed with which he used it to create stem cells, first in mice and then humans. One challenge was figuring out which genes would reprogram adult cells. With hundreds of candidate genes, the number of possible combinations was almost infinite.

Dr. Yamanaka said he narrowed the field with a very unscientific method: he made an educated guess.

He said he used his instincts, as well as published research of other scientists, to pick the 24 most promising genes. In the lab, he found that the 24 did indeed contain four genes that could reprogram adult cells into stem cells.

“Choosing those initial 24 genes was almost like buying a ticket at the lottery,” he recalled. “I was just lucky. I bought the right lottery ticket.”

Another challenge was adapting the reprogramming method, which he first developed with mouse cells, to human cells.

He failed for months, and at one point even went back to the pool of 24 genes to see if human cells required a different combination of master regulator genes than those of mice. He also began experimenting with seemingly minor changes, like switching the gel-like culture solution in which the cells are grown. It was the small changes that worked, finally allowing him to reprogram human skin cells with the same four genes.

“If you had asked me back in June,” he said, “I would have told you the same four genes wouldn’t work in humans.”

Despite the breakthrough, the procedure has shortcomings, including a tendency of the newly created stem cells to turn cancerous, a risk with stem cells in general but heightened because Dr. Yamanaka used a known tumor-causing gene. Cancer risk is one reason stem cell therapy still seems a distant possibility; stem cell research shows more immediate promise as a way to pursue basic science.

Since announcing the finding last month, Dr. Yamanaka has already taken a step toward reducing cancer risk. In the Nov. 30 issue of Nature Biotechnology, he announced that even without using the cancer gene, he was still able to reprogram cells, and with a much lower incidence of cancer.

He says the biggest remaining problem is the procedure’s use of retroviruses to insert the genes into the cell’s chromosomes. Retroviruses are a type of virus that can also cause mutations in the adult cells, making them cancerous. Dr. Yamanaka said his next research goal was to reprogram without retroviruses.

He said he also wanted to set up a commercial collaboration between his university and a private company to use stem cells right away in laboratory research for creating new and more powerful medicines. The current cancer risk is not a problem so long as the cells are used in the petri dish, and not transplanted into humans, he said.

“I want to find ways to put the stem cells to use quickly,” he said.

Dr. Yamanaka said it was in medical school that he discovered a love of laboratory work, as a student helping with autopsies and research into alcoholism. After graduation, he pursued a doctorate in pharmacology at Osaka City University instead of going into practice.

His interest in genetic work came when he stumbled upon a paper about genetically engineered mice, known as knockout mice. He recalls feeling fascinated with the notion of replacing genes, which seemed a far more precise way of treatment than the conventional medicines he was then studying.

The best place to learn about genetics and knockout mice was the United States, where Dr. Yamanaka had no friends or contacts. He said he sent some 30 letters to American universities and specialists whose names he culled from science magazines and journals. One of the few to respond was the University of California, San Francisco, which offered him a post-doctoral position in 1993.

In 1996, he returned to Osaka City University, bringing with him a batch of knockout mice. But as an assistant professor in the pharmacology department, he received little financing and just a single seat in a shared laboratory.

“I grew so depressed from the lack of support that I considered quitting,” he said. “No one understood me.”

In 1999, his career got a break when he was hired by other universities, including Kyoto University in 2004, that were willing to give him a laboratory and more money. At about the same time, he said, he visited his friend’s fertility clinic. That visit inspired him to find a way around the moral issues that had bogged down stem cell research, not just in the United States but also Japan, where the Education Ministry put tough restrictions on embryo use.

In fact, restrictions are so tight that he says he cannot use human embryos at his laboratories here. Instead, research using human embryos is done at U.C. San Francisco, where he maintains a small two-person laboratory. He said he had never handled actual embryonic cells himself, and the American lab uses them only to verify that the reprogrammed adult cells are behaving as true stem cells.

“There is no way now to get around some use of embryos,” he said. “But my goal is to avoid using them.”

In an unexpectedly very early move, the National Review, the leading journal of conservative thought in the United States, has declared its choice for the next US President.





ROMNEY FOR PRESIDENT
By The Editors
December 11, 2007


Many conservatives are finding it difficult to pick a presidential candidate. Each of the men running for the Republican nomination has strengths, and none has everything — all the traits, all the positions — we are looking for. Equally conservative analysts can reach, and have reached, different judgments in this matter. There are fine conservatives supporting each of these Republicans.

Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate. In our judgment, that candidate is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.

Unlike some other candidates in the race, Romney is a full-spectrum conservative: a supporter of free-market economics and limited government, moral causes such as the right to life and the preservation of marriage, and a foreign policy based on the national interest.

While he has not talked much about the importance of resisting ethnic balkanization — none of the major candidates has — he supports enforcing the immigration laws and opposes amnesty. Those are important steps in the right direction.

Uniting the conservative coalition is not enough to win a presidential election, but it is a prerequisite for building on that coalition. Rudolph Giuliani did extraordinary work as mayor of New York and was inspirational on 9/11. But he and Mike Huckabee would pull apart the coalition from opposite ends: Giuliani alienating the social conservatives, and Huckabee the economic (and foreign-policy) conservatives. A Republican party that abandoned either limited government or moral standards would be much diminished in the service it could give the country.

Two other major candidates would be able to keep the coalition together, but have drawbacks of their own. John McCain is not as conservative as Romney. He sponsored and still champions a campaign-finance law that impinged on fundamental rights of political speech; he voted against the Bush tax cuts; he supported this year’s amnesty bill, although he now says he understands the need to control the border before doing anything else.

Despite all that and more, he is a hero with a record that is far more good than bad. He has been a strong and farsighted supporter of the Iraq War, and, in a trying political season for him, he has preserved and even enhanced his reputation for dignity and seriousness. There would be worse nominees for the GOP. But McCain ran an ineffectual campaign for most of the year and is still paying for it.

Fred Thompson is as conservative as Romney, and has distinguished himself with serious proposals on Social Security, immigration, and defense. But Thompson has never run any large enterprise — and he has not run his campaign well, either. Conservatives were excited this spring to hear that he might enter the race, but have been disappointed by the reality. He has been fading in crucial early states. He has not yet passed the threshold test of establishing for voters that he truly wants to be president.

Romney is an intelligent, articulate, and accomplished former businessman and governor. At a time when voters yearn for competence and have soured on Washington because too often the Bush administration has not demonstrated it, Romney offers proven executive skill. He has demonstrated it in everything he has done in his professional life, and his tightly organized, disciplined campaign is no exception. He himself has shown impressive focus and energy.

It is true that he has less foreign-policy experience than Thompson and (especially) McCain, but he has more executive experience than both. Since almost all of the candidates have the same foreign-policy principles, what matters most is which candidate has the skills to execute that vision.

Like any Republican, he would have an uphill climb next fall. But he would be able to offer a persuasive outsider’s critique of Washington.

His conservative accomplishments as governor showed that he can work with, and resist, a Demo­crat­ic legislature. He knows that not every feature of the health-care plan he enacted in Massachusetts should be replicated nationally, but he can also speak with more authority than any of the other Republican candidates about this pressing issue. He would also have credibility on the economy, given his success as a businessman and a manager of the Olympics.

Some conservatives question his sincerity. It is true that he has reversed some of his positions. But we should be careful not to overstate how much he has changed. In 1994, when he tried to unseat Ted Kennedy, he ran against higher taxes and government-run health care, and for school choice, a balanced budget amendment, welfare reform, and “tougher measures to stop illegal immigration.” He was no Rockefeller Republican even then.

We believe that Romney is a natural ally of social conservatives. He speaks often about the toll of fatherlessness in this country. He may not have thought deeply about the political dimensions of social issues until, as governor, he was confronted with the cutting edge of social liberalism.

No other Republican governor had to deal with both human cloning and court-imposed same-sex marriage. He was on the right side of both issues, and those battles seem to have made him see the stakes of a broad range of public-policy issues more clearly. He will work to put abortion on a path to extinction. Whatever the process by which he got to where he is on marriage, judges, and life, we’re glad he is now on our side — and we trust him to stay there.

He still has some convincing to do with other conservatives. Romney has been plagued by the sense that his is a passionless, paint-by-the-numbers conservatism. If he is to win the nomination, he will have to show more of the kind of emotion and resolve he demonstrated in his College Station “Faith in America” speech.

For some people, Romney’s Mormonism is still a barrier. But we are not electing a pastor. The notion that he will somehow be controlled by Salt Lake City or engaged in evangelism for his church is outlandish. He deserves to be judged on his considerable merits as a potential president.

As he argued in his College Station speech, his faith informs his values, which he has demonstrated in both the private and public sectors. In none of these cases have any specific doctrines of his church affected the quality of his leadership. Romney is an exemplary family man and a patriot whose character matches the high office to which he aspires.

More than the other primary candidates, Romney has President Bush’s virtues and avoids his flaws. His moral positions, and his instincts on taxes and foreign policy, are the same. But he is less inclined to federal activism, less tolerant of overspending, better able to defend conservative positions in debate, and more likely to demand performance from his subordinates.

A winning combination, by our lights. In this most fluid and unpredictable Republican field, we vote for Mitt Romney.

Ahmadinejad on pilgrimage to Mecca,
invited by King Abdullah


Tehran, Dec. 13 (AsiaNews) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinajad will travel to Makkah (Mecca) for Hajj, invited by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah. His pilgrimage to the holy city will be the first by a president of the Islamic republic — but the third time Ahmadinejad visits the desert kingdom since his election in 2005.

[IMG]http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/2238/arabiasauditairanahmadikk0.jpg[/IMG]
Pilgrims around the Holy Ka'aba in Mecca, Islam's holiest shrine.

Iranian news agency ISNA reports that King Abdullah “officially invited President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to participate in Hajj pilgrimage,” with “Iran's ambassador to Saudi Arabia” announcing that the president “will fly to that country early next week.” ISNA called the trip “a new chapter in the two countries' relations.”

The invitation to the Iranian president is further example of Riyadh’s involvement on many tense diplomatic fronts in the region, including the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Hamas-Fatah relations, and the Lebanon-Syria divide.

Saudi Arabia’s goal is twofold: stop Tehran’s expansionism in the region and encourage regional coexistence, which in turn can help the Saudi monarchy avoid any internal repercussions.

The king’s action is particularly significant in light of the past, which includes a 1987 anti-American demonstration by Iranian “pilgrims” in Makkah that ended in 402 people losing their lives, and the present, which includes tight anti-terrorism measures taken by Saudi authorities this year that deny access to Islam’s top holy city to those who cannot prove their bona fide pilgrims.

Ahmadinejad on pilgrimage to Mecca,
invited by King Abdullah


Tehran, Dec. 13 (AsiaNews) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinajad will travel to Makkah (Mecca) for Hajj, invited by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah. His pilgrimage to the holy city will be the first by a president of the Islamic republic — but the third time Ahmadinejad visits the desert kingdom since his election in 2005.


Pilgrims around the Holy Ka'aba in Mecca, Islam's holiest shrine.

Iranian news agency ISNA reports that King Abdullah “officially invited President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to participate in Hajj pilgrimage,” with “Iran's ambassador to Saudi Arabia” announcing that the president “will fly to that country early next week.” ISNA called the trip “a new chapter in the two countries' relations.”

The invitation to the Iranian president is further example of Riyadh’s involvement on many tense diplomatic fronts in the region, including the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Hamas-Fatah relations, and the Lebanon-Syria divide.

Saudi Arabia’s goal is twofold: stop Tehran’s expansionism in the region and encourage regional coexistence, which in turn can help the Saudi monarchy avoid any internal repercussions.

The king’s action is particularly significant in light of the past, which includes a 1987 anti-American demonstration by Iranian “pilgrims” in Makkah that ended in 402 people losing their lives, and the present, which includes tight anti-terrorism measures taken by Saudi authorities this year that deny access to Islam’s top holy city to those who cannot prove their bona fide pilgrims.

Iraq's maverick cleric
goes 'back to school'
By HAMZA HENDAWI and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA





BAGHDAD, Dec. 13 (AP) - The leader of Iraq's biggest Shiite militia movement has quietly resumed seminary studies toward attaining the title of ayatollah — a goal that could make firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army an even more formidable power broker in Iraq.

Al-Sadr's objectives — described to The Associated Press by close aides — are part of increasingly bitter Shiite-on-Shiite battles for control of Iraq's southern oil fields, the lucrative pilgrim trade to Shiite holy cities and the nation's strategic Persian Gulf outlet.

The endgame among Iraq's majority Shiites also means long-term influence over Iraqi political and financial affairs as the Pentagon and its allies look to scale down their military presence in the coming year.

Al-Sadr's backers remain main players in the showdowns across the region, where fears of even more bloodshed are rising following Wednesday's triple car bombing in one of the area's main urban hubs. At least 25 people were killed and scores wounded.

But al-Sadr — who was last seen publicly in May — is also confronting the most serious challenges to his influence, which includes sway over a bloc in parliament and a militia force that numbers as many as 60,000 by some estimates.

Becoming an ayatollah — one of the highest Shiite clerical positions — would give the 33-year-old al-Sadr an important new voice and aura.

It also would give him fresh clout to challenge his top rival, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which looks to Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani as its highest religious authority and has its own armed wing, the Badr Brigade, which have been largely absorbed into Iraqi security forces.

Al-Sadr often stresses his Iraqi and Arab roots and rejects suggestions that he is beholden to Persian Iran, the world's Shiite heavyweight and the benefactor of many Shiite politicians.

As an ayatollah, his views and fatwas, or religious edicts, would resonate with even more authority as the battles heat up for sway over Iraq's Shiite heartland.

Comparisons are often drawn between al-Sadr's strategy — a mix of militia strength, well-tuned street politics and social outreach — and the hallmarks of Hezbollah, which has been influenced by Lebanon's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, as well Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of Iran's 1979 Islam Revolution.

"If ... Muqtada becomes a religious authority, the entire movement will grow stronger," said one of the aides who described al-Sadr's seminary studies to the AP.

The al-Sadr associates — three in all — spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to share the information with the media. Their accounts, made in separate interviews, were in broad agreement.

Al-Sadr currently has the relatively low title of hojat al-Islam, which leaves his supporters no choice but to seek religious guidance from top establishment clerics — many of whom al-Sadr sees as out of touch with common Iraqis and accuses of acquiescing to Washington's demands.

The aides said al-Sadr was currently on a path to achieve ayatollah rank possibly by 2010 or earlier. His studies were under the supervision of senior clerics in the Shiite holy city of Najaf — where al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fought grinding urban battles with U.S. forces in 2004.

In 2000, al-Sadr enrolled in "outside research" — roughly the equivalent of a doctoral program. Afghan-born Grand Ayatollah Ahmed Issaq al-Fayadh, one of Najaf's four top clerics, supervised him when he joined, but al-Sadr's attendance has been spotty since 2003.

Successful candidates qualify for ayatollah upon completion of the rigorous Islamic studies. But it's also necessary to have a family pedigree in Islamic scholarship and a following among seminary students and laymen.

Al-Sadr should have no problem. His father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, is the namesake for the teeming Shiite district in Baghdad known as Sadr City — called Saddam City before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Saddam Hussein's agents killed al-Sadr's father and two brothers in 1999.

Significantly, the aides said, the main focus of al-Sadr's studies has been the Shiite doctrine known in Arabic as "wilayet al-faqeeh," which supports the right of clerical rule. The concept was adopted Iran's Khomeini, but carries little support among Iraq's Shiite religious hierarchy.

Al-Sadr has not been seen in public since May but is believed to travel frequently between Iran and Najaf. His whereabouts are never revealed by his aides and he rarely gives media interviews.

Al-Sadr also is seeking to give the Mahdi Army a more religious bloodline, the aides said.

Some militiamen are taking seminary lessons for three hours a day, five days a week in private homes and out-of-the-way mosques to escape the detection of the U.S. military.

The aides said only those who pass seminary exams will remain in the militia, which has been splintered by defections from factions favoring closer ties with Iran and opposing an order in August to put down weapons for six months.

The move was seen as an attempt by al-Sadr to reclaim control of the militia and weed out mutineers. It has been credited for a noticeable reduction in violence, but appears to have emboldened the U.S. military to step up a crackdown against Mahdi leaders.

The cleric's absence from the public eye has raised some questions about his control of the movement, although his aides said he has been in regular contact with key lieutenants. His loyalists hold 30 of parliament's 275 seats, the largest share by a single party.

"The movement's strength and cohesion don't revolve around al-Sadr alone," said Saad al-Hadeithi, a political science lecture at Baghdad university. "Al-Sadr is leading a movement that's largely held together by the historical legacy of the family."

It's also fueled by the intense rivalry with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and its leader, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, who also carries a bloody family narrative.

The group's founder, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, was assassinated in August 2003 in a bombing blamed on Sunni militants.

The younger al-Hakim holds the same hojat al-Islam rank as al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr pulled out his ministers from the Shiite-dominated government in April and later pulled out from the umbrella Shiite alliance in parliament.

Tensions in southern Iraq have risen sharply in recent weeks as the United States and Britain prepare to scale down their presence, leaving behind a potentially dangerous power vacuum.

Next week, Britain plans to hand over control of Basra province, the most important in the south. The Pentagon has diverted much of its attention to battles in central and northern Iraq against Sunni extremists, including al-Qaida in Iraq.

In his latest statement, however, al-Sadr counseled his followers to be patient in the face of "predicament" and commended them on their adherence to his order to stand down. But the aides said al-Sadr's own patience may be running thin and a showdown with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council may be imminent.

"If this continues for much longer, the Sadrist movement will strike back," warned one of the aides. "This could have grave consequences for everyone."

Dalai Lama in Rome for summit
of Nobel laureates

I replaced the headline that came with this item, which was 'Pope cancels meeting with Dalai Lama', beacause it is so blatantly false and misleading.



ROME, Dec. 13 (AFP) - Tibet'S exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama arrived in Rome for an annual summit of Nobel peace laureates but a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI was cancelled at the last minute. [It was not! That there would be no meeting with the Pope as reported unofficially much earlier was already reported when the Dalai Lama arrived in italy last week. This such a blatant piece of misreporting.]

The Dalai Lama, who won the Nobel peace prize in 1989, will be received by Italy's lower house of parliament. He came to Rome from northern Italy where he lectured at a seminary, the Telenews agency reported.

Apart from the Tibetan leader, the former Russian and Polish presidents Mikhail Gorbachev and Lech Walesa, who were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 and 1983, are attending the Annual Summit of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates in Rome.

The summit has been orgainsed by the city of Rome for the past eight years.


The Dalai Lama with Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni yesterday at the Nobel laureates summit.


Beijing has complained to the Italian foreign ministry over the visit, even though the Dalai Lama will not meet with any members of the Italian government.

A planned meeting with Pope Benedict XVI was cancelled, in a decision that Italian media reports said facilitated the ordination on Tuesday of a new bishop in Guangdong, southern China, with the Vatican's approval.

The political high point of the Dalai Lama's stay will likely be his meeting with Italian MPs in Rome.

NOW YOU KNOW WHY SHE ISSOMETIMES CALLED 'BABA WAWA'

This is the banal and pathetic level of discourse on American TV, even with a supposed icon of the trade.


ABC's Barbara Walters Slams
White House Christmas Card
for including Scripture
By Colleen Raezler
Culture and Media Institute


LOS ANGELES, December 14, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Barbara Walters likes to receive Christmas greetings from high-profile celebrities and leaders, but apparently not if they refer to the Bible.

On Thursday's episode of ABC's The View, Walters expressed dismay that President and Mrs. Bush would send out greetings containing Scripture.

During the segment, Walters showed the other gals some of the "highfalutin Christmas cards," and explained the White House card:

"First of all, let me show you the cover of the White House, which is nice and bland…So that's pleasant enough. This is what interested me, that it is a religious Christmas card. Usually in the past when I have received a Christmas card, it's been 'happy holiday's' and so on- And this says:

"'You alone are the Lord. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You gave life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.'

"That's from Nehemiah in the Old Testament. I don't remember- and I'm sure people will remind me-getting a religious card. Now does this also go to agnostics and atheists and Muslims and -"

Moderator Whoopie Goldberg and co-host Sherri Shepherd tried to steer clear of controversy by joking that the Scriptures were about Walters, but Walters persisted in her critique, asking, "Don't you think it's a little interesting that the president of all the people is sending out a religious Christmas card?"

Walters showed her co-hosts a Christmas card from Elton John and his partner David Furnish that had angels on the cover. She didn't have similar concerns over the religious imagery as she did about the Scripture printed in the White House card.

Co-host Joy Behar pointed out to Walters that Elton John's card was "religious," and Walters responded, "But it doesn't say anything religious. It says 'Season's Greetings.'"

Later in the show Walters did say, "By the way, I don't want to put down the President of the United States and his wife. I think it's very nice that they sent me a Christmas card."

=====================================================================

To my knowledge - since the presidential Christmas card is always given some attention during the Christmas season - the Bushes have always had a verse of Scripture in their Christmas cards since they came to the White House, and I am not aware that Walters has protested it in previous years. And surely, if she hadn't received any of the Bush Christmas cards in the past, we would have heard that too!

Besides, a Christmas card is supposed to be the sender's personal message of goodwill to commemorate the birth of Christ. If he wants that message to include the message of Christ - which is wwhat Christmas is all about, to begin with - then why not? The Bushes being devout Christians, this card was sent specifically as a Christmas card, not as a generic holiday card!

And what is it about the Old Testament verse that would offend a Jew or a Muslim, who believe in a Creator? Or even any non-believer who does not think there is a God, who knows the card is coming from a believer? (Altough, chances are, the Bush Christmas card list is not likely to include any non-believers.

Hitchens looks to 'greats'
to argue 'God is Not Great'
By Maria Sanminiatelli
Associated Press Writer
December 09, 2007


Christopher Hitchens believes it is time to rid people of several notions.

Mark Twain did not believe in God, Americans are not uncritically devout and an atheist can be elected president of the United States.

In fact, the extent of religion's hold on people, the British-born author, journalist and provocateur says, has been vastly exaggerated. Despite polls that suggest differently, people are not as religious as many think, he says.

"I knew that the zeitgeist of religion was changing, that the parties of God would ... (anger people) in their various forms: Republican or Shiite," Hitchens says. "But I had, I think, underestimated how much of this there was."

He was referring, in part, to the comments he received following the April release of his best seller, "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," in which he lambasts religion as illogical and dangerous, and blames believers for centuries of war, persecutions and other ills.

A new anthology published earlier this month, "The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever," continues to press the case.

Witty and feisty, the Oxford-educated Hitchens is known for his contentious stances that make him difficult to typecast. A former Trotskyist who published regularly in British and American left-wing publications, he has bitterly criticized Mother Teresa — he testified against her before Vatican officials when then-Pope John Paul II prepared to beatify the nun — former President Clinton and former national security adviser and secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

Hitchens separated from the political left shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks following a series of disagreements. Among other things, he famously supported the war in Iraq and favored Clinton's impeachment.

The man's success is obvious. Over a recent lunch at midtown hotel, the 58-year-old Hitchens explained his thinking. He sipped whiskey, comfortable in black tie hours before the reception for the National Book Awards. (He became a U.S. citizen and eligible for the prize earlier this year, and was a finalist in the nonfiction category for "God is Not Great." He did not win.)

With so many engagements between lunch and dinner, he had no time to change, and made a big production of a missing button on his shirt as his editor bent over him and struggled to push through a shirt stud.

Fashion emergencies aside, the author will not be distracted from his quest to convince the world that religion does more harm than good, and just doesn't make sense.

"Just because we are on the winning side of this doesn't mean we can just relax," Hitchens said.

The anthology presents the writings of philosophers, scientists, writers and thinkers in support of his side of the great God debate. The book includes Lucretius, Benedict de Spinoza, George Eliot, Anatole France, Mark Twain, Bertrand Russell, and some never before published pieces by Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

The book was in the top 20 of The New York Times list of best sellers for paperback nonfiction, and on the extended best-seller list of Book Sense, a national association of independent booksellers.

"The fact that Christopher Hitchens is the editor, that certainly has an impact on how well it is selling, and it is selling very well," Donavin Bennes, a religion book buyer for Borders Group Inc., said. "Obviously, he's a very provocative writer ... and there's a definite interest in the topic."

Hitchens says he wants "The Portable Atheist" to be a resource "for the embattled person in some case of a small town idiocy, persecution or attempted stultification of children."

He referred to the federal court ruling in 2005 that banned the Dover, Pa., public school district from teaching the concept of "intelligent design" as part of a science class. The judge had said that the theory, which argues that an intelligent supernatural force explains the emergence of complex life forms, was creationism in disguise.

"The Portable Atheist" took a mere few weeks to assemble. The contributors are many and varied, and part of Hitchens' mission was to break the idea that atheism goes hand-in-hand with liberal politics.

"There are quite a lot of good conservatives and free marketeers and so on who think Christianity, in particular, is servile and irrational," Hitchens says.

But Christianity is not his only target. "We take on Islam head on," he says.

The longest of all the contributions — 61 pages — is an attack against the Quran by Ibn Warraq, a former Muslim scholar who hides his true identity.

"Many people, including humanists and agnostics, in this country are very reluctant to criticize Islam because they think it is the religion of another people, and thus deserves respect on ... cultural terms," Hitchens says. "And this is a sentimentality for which we have no patience."

Hitchens also strives to prove that there is beauty in atheism — Mozart was almost certainly an atheist, the author says. "We may possibly come out with an atheist CD of nonbeliever musicians."

He adds, as a warning, "I'm only half-joking."

Terry Schiavo's brother reveals
support by some Catholic clergy
for sister's death by euthanasia
By Steve Jalsevac


December 14, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Bobby Schindler, the brother of Terri Shiavo, the young woman who was dehydrated to death in Florida in 2005, has become a prominent opponent of euthanasia since that wrenching time for his family.

In a recent Challenge magazine interview with Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, Schindler revealed the shocking details of the support from many prominent Catholic clergy for the court ordered removal of food and hydration from Terri. Bobby is a practicing Catholic as was his sister.

Schindler stated that his sister "was not dying, not attached to any type of machinery and was only being sustained by food and water via a feeding tube." He noted that Catholic teaching does not allow a person "regardless of any advanced directive or even the sworn testimony of another person" to refuse food and water with the intent to cause their own death or that of another.

Still, Fr. Gerard Murphy of the Diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida actually helped Judge Greer make the decision to dehydrate and starve Terri to death. Fr. Murphy did not consult with any members of Terri's family and did not even visit Terri. Murphy did however consult with Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, an assisted suicide/euthanasia activist, and testified on behalf of Michael Schiavo.

Bishop Lynch of the Diocese of St. Petersburg refused to help the family stop the euthanasia death order and supported Father Murphy's seriously flawed position. The bishop eventually issued a confusing statement that was of no help to the situation and after that the Florida bishops supported Bishop Lynch's position.

Other prominent US clergy also made public statements condoning what was happening to Terri.

Schindler said Jesuit Father John Paris, professor at Boston College, commented on Pope John Paul II's statement mandating life sustaining treatment. Paris said in these situations, "I think the best thing to do is ignore it and it will go away. It's not an authoritative teaching statement. The problem here is that non-Catholics think when the Pope says 'Jump,' we all say, 'How high?'"

Father Kevin O'Rourke, ethics professor at the Loyola University of Chicago Medical School, told the Miami Herald that preserving Terri's life was "blasphemy." He also said, "For Christians, it is a blasphemy to keep people alive as if you were doing them a favor."

Father Richard McBrien, theology professor at the University of Notre Dame, told Bill O'Reilly of Fox News that, "This is not a question of euthanasia," directly contradicting the Vatican. "This is the removal of an 'extraordinary' means of sustaining life …"

Fortunately, there were many other priests and some bishops who were appalled by what was happening. The Vatican began issuing their own statements. Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care, said, "Food and hydration are never considered medicine. To remove them means euthanasia, it means killing, and so this woman was killed by hunger and starvation. Let's stop with the euphemisms - they killed her."

Then, on March 31, Cardinal (Renato) Martino issued the strongest statement yet from Rome, when he said, "Whoever stands idly by without trying to prevent the death of Terri Schindler-Schiavo becomes an accomplice to murder."

Terri was successfully murdered as she succumbed to the extended withholding of food and water on March 31, 2005.

See the complete interview as published in the November The Interim newspaper at www.theinterim.com/2007/nov/08schindler.html