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

I hope we shall be able to find at least one anecdotal profile like this on each of the cardinals-designate.

Archbishop Foley is named a cardinal
By WILLIAM BENDER & DANA DiFILIPPO
Philadelphia Daily News
Oct. 18, 2007



Pope Benedict XVI, announcing the next class of Roman Catholic cardinals yesterday, answered the question Philadelphians have been asking John Foley for years: Yo, Archbishop, when are you going to get that red hat?

The answer is Nov. 24.



Archbishop John Patrick Foley, 71, a Delaware County native and St. Joseph's University graduate, learned yesterday that he is one of 23 prelates to be elevated to cardinal at next month's consistory in Rome.

Foley will be the only living cardinal born in the Philadelphia Archdiocese, following in the footsteps of the late Cardinals John J. O'Connor, Dennis Dougherty and Francis Brennan.

In typical Foley fashion, he took the news humbly - and gave a shout-out to Sister Elizabeth Gorvin, his eighth-grade teacher at Holy Spirit School, in Sharon Hill.

The promotion, he said, is "more a reflection of Philadelphia and the religious formation and motivation it gives."

Maybe so, but Eileen Guest, Foley's cousin in Lancaster County, couldn't hold back. "I'm basking in the glory," she said.

Foley got the word Tuesday, when he was summoned by the church's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, just after Foley had cataract surgery.

"I figured it was important if they were sending a car for me," Foley said. "When I got to his office, I was wearing an eye patch, so I looked like a pirate, which is appropriate because my name in Irish means pirate!"

There, Foley was told that he would be named cardinal the next day. He was asked to keep it a secret (as if everybody didn't already know). On the way back from a follow-up appointment with his eye doctor yesterday, Foley asked his driver to stop by St. Peter's Square, where 25,000 people packed the pavement to hear the pope speak.

Foley joined the crowd, standing in the rear next to a Polish man who spoke a little English. When the names of the new cardinals were read, the man turned to Foley and said, "Do you know any of these people?"

"I said, 'I know many of them, and in fact, I am one of them.' Well, I don't think he believed me," Foley said with a laugh. "He just sort of looked at me."

Back in Philly, everybody in the Catholic community knows who Foley is. And everybody seems to believe that he was destined to become a "prince" of the Church.

Rome will be flooded next month by Foley's friends and Philadelphia-area well-wishers. Travel arrangements were made well in advance of yesterday's announcement.

"If there was ever a person who deserved it, it's him," said Mary Doran, whose late husband, Dick Doran, was among Foley's closest friends. "I have to assume that Dick is going to be there in spirit."

Tom Massaro met Foley when Massaro was former Mayor Bill Green's housing director and Foley was the editor of the Catholic Standard & Times. Foley would prove to be a good person to know when times are tough.

In 2003, while working on church-restoration projects in Rome, Massaro became seriously ill and spent several months in a hospital's intensive-care unit. He had no phone, no computer and no contact with his family - except through Foley. The archbishop would visit him weekly. He would write or call Massaro's children to update them on their father's condition.

"He broke hospital rules a couple times and snuck me in a snack," Massaro said. "Everybody in the hospital would get such a lift when he came because he is so deeply respected in Rome."

While Foley has lived in Rome for nearly 25 years, he has kept close ties to Philadelphia and city issues - schools, racial harmony, economic opportunities in North Philadelphia.

He was ordained an archbishop in 1984 by the late Cardinal John Krol, and in June was named pro-grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. A Mass celebrating his elevation to cardinal is scheduled for Dec. 13 at 6 p.m. at the Cathedral Basilica of Ss. Peter and Paul, on the Parkway.

"He's a remarkable human being," Mary Doran said, "and the Church is lucky to have him." *

Bhutto blames extremists for bomb attack
By PAISLEY DODDS



KARACHI, Pakistan, Oct. 19 (AP) - Benazir Bhutto blamed al-Qaida and Taliban militants Friday for the assassination attempt against her that killed at least 136 people, and declared she would risk her life to restore democracy in Pakistan and prevent an extremist takeover.

The former premier presented a long list of foes who would like to see her dead — from loyalists of a previous military regime that executed her politician father to Islamic hard-liners bent on stopping a female leader from modernizing Pakistan.

"We believe democracy alone can save Pakistan from disintegration and a militant takeover," Bhutto said at a news conference less than 24 hours after bombs exploded near a truck carrying her in a festive procession marking her return from eight years of self-imposed exile.

"We are prepared to risk our lives and we are prepared to risk our liberty, but we are not prepared to surrender our great nation to the militants," the pro-Western leader added.

Bhutto, who came home to lead her party in January parliamentary elections, said she had been warned before returning that Taliban and al-Qaida suicide squads would try to kill her, saying a "brotherly" nation provided her with a list of telephone numbers of suicide squads.

She said she warned of that threat in a letter Tuesday to Pakistan's current military leader, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, with whom she has been negotiating a possible political alliance.

"There was one suicide squad from the Taliban elements, one suicide squad from al-Qaida, one suicide squad from Pakistani Taliban and a fourth — a group — I believe from Karachi," she said.

Bhutto said it was suspicious that streetlights failed as her procession made its way from Karachi's airport toward downtown Thursday night. She said cell phone service also was out.

"I'm not accusing the government, but certain individuals who abuse their positions and powers," she said.

She pointed to supporters of the former military regime of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, who seized power in 1977 and hanged her father, deposed Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Zia also jailed Benazir Bhutto several times before his death in a mysterious plane crash in 1988.

Bhutto said the military thugs of the 1970s who terrorized her family and today's Islamic militants share the same thirst "to kill and maim innocent people and deny them the right to a representative government."

All of them want to destabilize Pakistan, and the suicide bomb attack was part of that campaign, she said.

"It was an attack by a militant minority that does not enjoy the support of the people of Pakistan, that has only triumphed in a military dictatorship," she said.

Washington said the blasts showed the challenges as Pakistan tries to build a moderate Islamic democracy.

"It tells you a lot about the kinds of people we are battling against every day, that any flicker of democracy they want to find a way to beat it down and stamp it out," said White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto.

Pakistani officials, who said Thursday night's bloodshed would not disrupt election plans, said one suicide bomber staged the attack.

Authorities said the assault bore the hallmarks of a Taliban-allied warlord and the al-Qaida terror network — with a man first throwing a grenade into the sea of people around Bhutto's convoy and then blowing himself up with a bomb wrapped in bolts and other pieces of metal.

Pakistani television showed video of what it said was the severed head of the suspected bomber, an unshaven man in his 20s with curly hair and green eyes.

Officials said the warlord was Baitullah Mehsud, a leader on the unstable Afghan border who threatened earlier this month to meet Bhutto's return to Pakistan with suicide attacks, according to local media reports. An associate of Mehsud denied Taliban involvement.

Bhutto diputed the government's version of the attack, saying that there were two suicide bombers and that her security guards also had found a third man armed with a pistol and another with a suicide vest.



Bhutto's procession had been creeping toward the center of Karachi for 10 hours Thursday when a small explosion erupted near the front of her truck as well-wishers swarmed around it. A larger blast quickly followed, destroying two police vans.



Party officials said the 54-year-old Bhutto had left the open top of the truck and gone inside to rest her swollen feet only a few minutes earlier. She was reviewing a speech with an adviser when they heard a loud bang.

"Something in my heart told me that this is not a firecracker, it is a suicide attack," she said at the news conference. "You could see the light, and then as we waited for 30 seconds to 60 seconds, we heard the sound and saw the huge orange light and bodies spilling all over."

She praised her security guards. "They refused to let the suicide bomber, the second suicide bomber, get near the truck. So the second suicide bomber hit the security guard wall ... he couldn't hit the truck."

Rejecting criticism that she had endangered her supporters, Bhutto said it was the right decision to return to help her homeland and she was willing to pay the price.

Bhutto predicted extremists would now try to attack her homes in Karachi, the country's biggest city, and her hometown of Larkana. Officials of her Pakistan People's Party guarded her Karachi residence Friday, forming a human chain around the building to keep people back.

The attack that wrecked Bhutto's jubilant homecoming parade was one of the deadliest in Pakistan's history, with six hospitals reporting a total of 136 dead and some 250 wounded.

While the carnage underlined the threats to stability, the attack also was likely to push Bhutto and Musharraf toward an alliance that would be backed by the U.S. and others in the West.

Musharraf, who phoned Bhutto on Friday to express his condolences, is a longtime rival but they share moderate views and support working with the United States in fighting militant groups.

Information Minister Mohammed Ali Durrani said the parliamentary ballot would go ahead as planned in January. "Elections will be held on time," he said.

Bhutto served twice as prime minister between 1988 and 1996, but both of her governments ended amid allegations of corruption and mismanagement. She left Pakistan after Musharraf seized power in 1999 and corruption charges were filed against her.

She was able to return after her power-sharing talks with the general brought her immunity covering the corruption cases.

Musharraf won re-election to the presidency in a vote this month by lawmakers that is being challenged in the Supreme Court. If confirmed for a new five-year term, he has promised to quit the military and restore civilian rule.



Here was an earlier report from AsiaNews:


'I was on the truck with Bhutto
when all hell broke loose' -
Eyewitness account told to
Qaiser Felix




[]The chairman of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA) witnessed yesterday’s terrorist attack in Karachi.
The death toll now stands at 138 with more than 400 people wounded. Police blame terrorists.
For Ms. Bhutto’s husband, elements within the government are the culprits.


Karachi, Oct. 19 (AsiaNews) – “Acts of coward terrorism,” is how Shahbaz Bhatti, chairman of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA), described the two bombs attacks that killed 138 people and wounded another 400.

The two blasts occurred near the vehicle that was carrying former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto home after eight years in voluntary exile. Mr Bhatti was in the same convoy and suffered only minor injuries. Ms Bhutto was not injured.

“The attack occurred last night, after midnight, when the rally of hundreds of thousand of people was moving towards the tomb of the father of the nation, Mohammad Ali Jinnah,” Mr Bhatti told AsiaNews.

“At one point, in the Karsaz area, there were two explosions near the vehicle that was carrying Ms Bhutto at the top of the convoy. She had just gone into a lower section of the vehicle to rest when the blast occurred. Windows were blown out, a door was blown up and people were dead and wounded all around. When I got off the truck blood and bits of human bodies were scattered all around the scene. These acts of coward terrorism have shocked and saddened all the people of Pakistan. These are days of mourning and pain,” he said.

Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) announced three days of mourning as police launched their investigation into the attacks.

Chief investigator Manzoor Mughal has said he was 100 per cent sure that the incident was a suicide attack.

For Bhatti these attacks “were committed by coward elements who are afraid and feel themselves insecure after the warm and historic reception of Ms Bhutto by the people of Pakistan.”

For the APMA chairman, “extremists are against the restoration of democracy, supremacy of constitution, the sovereignty of Pakistan, the emancipation of women and minorities and the formation of a real modern and democratic state according to the vision of the founding father, Mr Jinnah.”

After the attacks Ms Bhutto was immediately taken to her home in Karachi.

Leaving the airport, Bhutto refused to use a bullet proof glass booth that had been built on the top of the truck taking her to the tomb of Pakistan's founding father, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, to speak to the crowds.

Ms Bhutto has not talked to the media yet, but PPP spokesman Senator Farhatullah Babar quoted her as saying that she has demanded the government sack Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief Brigadier Ijaz Shah.

Ms Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari told Geo TV (a private TV channel) that he did not think extremist elements were behind these blasts. Instead, he suspects some elements within the government.

President General Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz have condemned the attacks. In separate messages they said that such acts cannot deter the government from its resolve to combat extremism and terrorism.

The international community, including the United States, the United Kingdom and the United Nations, has condemned the suicide attacks, hopeful that the blasts would not derail the country’s upcoming elections, scheduled for November 15.

Tony Blair: Iran extremism
like rise of 1930s fascism
By Helen Nugent
The Times of London
Oct. 19, 2007




Islamist extremism is similar to “rising fascism in the 1920s and 1930s”, Tony Blair said Thursday night in his first major speech since leaving office.

At a prestigious charity dinner in New York, the former Prime Minister said that public figures who blamed the rise of fundamentalism on the policies of the West were "mistaken".

He told the audience, which included New York governor Eliot Spitzer and mayor Michael Bloomberg, that Iran was the biggest exporter of the ideology, and that the Islamic republic was prepared to "back and finance terror" to support it.

“Out there in the Middle East, we’ve seen... the ideology driving this extremism and terror is not exhausted. On the contrary it believes it can and will exhaust us first," he said.

“Analogies with the past are never properly accurate, and analogies especially with the rising fascism can be easily misleading but, in pure chronology, I sometimes wonder if we’re not in the 1920s or 1930s again.

“This ideology now has a state, Iran, that is prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of destabilising countries whose people wish to live in peace.”

He added: “There is a tendency even now, even in some of our own circles, to believe that they are as they are because we have provoked them and if we left them alone they would leave us alone.

“I fear this is mistaken. They have no intention of leaving us alone.

“They have made their choice and leave us with only one to make - to be forced into retreat or to exhibit even greater determination and belief in standing up for our values than they do in standing up for their’s.”

Mr Blair, who represents the Quartet of the US, Europe, Russia and the United Nations on the Middle East, was speaking at the 62nd annual Alfred E Smith Memorial Foundation dinner at the Waldorf Astoria hotel.

Mr Blair went on: “I said straight after the attack of September 2001 that this was not an attack on America but on all of us. That Britain’s duty was to be shoulder to shoulder with you in confronting it. I meant it then and I mean it now.”

He added: “America and Europe should not be divided, we should stand up together.

“The values we share are as vital and true and, above all, needed today as they have been at any time in the last 100 years.”

Mr Blair received three standing ovations during the evening.

Earlier, the former Prime Minister said: “Out of this region the Middle East has been exported a deadly ideology based on a perversion of the proper faith of Islam but nonetheless articulated with demonic skill playing on the fears and grievances of Muslims everywhere.

“It did not originate from the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians, of course, far from it. But this dispute is used to great effect as a means of dividing people, sowing seeds of hatred and sectarianism.

“The impact of this global ideology is now no longer felt simply in the terrorism that afflicts Lebanon or Iran or Palestine. It is there also now in Pakistan, Afghanistan, in India, of course in Europe, in Madrid and London, and in the series of failed attempts to create terror across our continent.

“And here in New York you felt it in the thousands who died and who still mourn their lost ones.”

On several occasions the dinner chairman said he would have liked to see Mr Blair run for US president in 2008.

Referring to the Middle East, Mr Blair said: “The challenge is global, therefore our response must be global.

“Either the argument will be as our enemies want it framed as Islam versus the west. Or it will be as we want it framed as moderates of whatever faith, colour or race against extremism however it manifests itself.”

The dinner, which raises millions of pounds for hospitals, nursing homes and charitable agencies, is held in honour of Al Smith, the former governor of New York who was the first Catholic to be nominated by a major political party to run for US president.

Although unsuccessful, many historians believe the presidential bid paved the way for the candidacy of President John F Kennedy.

Not sure if this is the right place to put this, but I had to share. This may seem trivial but this will have a far greater impact than the simple winning of a game of rugby. This victory means a great deal to our country which has been in dire need of something positive like this. We have been sinking into an unpleasant darkness that has been threatening, especially lately, to engulf our country. The joy that followed our World Cup win in 1995 truly united our country. We are all hoping that this win will once again raise people's spirits and create a new feeling of unity and strength amongst our people.

GO BOKKE!

Congratulations, Pax

Here's hoping that this victory achieves the goals you are hoping for.

Jindal wins Louisiana governorship
By Robert Buckman
Washington Times




BATON ROUGE, Louisiana, Oct. 21 — Rep. Bobby Jindal coasted to a first-round victory in the state's gubernatorial primary late last night and made history as the nation's first governor-elect of Indian-American descent.

At 36, the two-term Republican congressman also will be the country's youngest governor when he takes office in January. Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, a fellow Republican, turns 37 next month.

Mr. Jindal and his 11 challengers were running to replace Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, a Democrat who decided in March not to run for re-election. She was widely criticized for her handling of the response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Mrs. Blanco had defeated Mr. Jindal in the 2003 runoff election.

At 11 p.m. local time last night, with 87 percent of the precincts reporting, Mr. Jindal had 588,002 votes (53 percent), enough to avoid a Nov. 17 runoff. His closest challenger, millionaire state Sen. Walter Boasso, a Democrat, had 196,104 votes (18 percent), followed by New Orleans businessman John Georges, an independent, with 156,962 (14 percent) and Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell, a Democrat, with 141,346 votes (13 percent).

"Let's give the homeland, the great state of Louisiana, a fresh start," Mr. Jindal said at the Holiday Inn Select in Baton Rouge late last night.

A lackluster turnout by black voters, who make up nearly 30 percent of the state's 2.8 million registered voters, was seen as the primary reason Mr. Jindal's three closest opponents could not marshal enough votes to force a runoff.

It marks the first time a non-incumbent has won the governorship without a runoff.

"Usually [when there's no incumbent], you have more than one major candidate," New Orleans pollster Ed Renwick said. "This time, we had one major candidate and a lot of candidates bunched together in second place."

The primary win was a dramatic comeback for Mr. Jindal, a Rhodes scholar who had capitalized on his reputation as an administrative wunderkind and problem solver when he ran for governor in 2003. He finished first in that primary with 33 percent, but lost to Mrs. Blanco in the runoff, 52 percent to 48 percent.

Gordon Harvey, a political historian at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, said despite Mr. Jindal's impressive credentials, his ethnicity may have defeated him in 2003.

"No one likes to talk about it, but there was a sector of the white population in northern Louisiana that defaulted in favor of a white woman instead of a man of Indian heritage," Mr. Harvey said. "I think they realized later they made a mistake."

Mr. Jindal was born in Baton Rouge, but his parents were born in Punjab, India. Born a Hindu, Mr. Jindal converted to Roman Catholicism as a teenager. He holds degrees from Brown University and Oxford.

Mr. Jindal was elected to the House in 2004, winning the suburban New Orleans seat Rep. David Vitter vacated when he ran for the Senate.

He advocates reducing corporate taxes and providing other incentives to lure businesses to Louisiana to stem the loss of jobs and population since the hurricanes. Mr. Jindal also has vowed to raise education spending above the Southern average, to reform the health care system and to crack down on corruption in the state.

Mr. Harvey said he fears Mr. Jindal may have a hard time living up to his boy-genius, whiz-kid reputation.

"Jindal's No. 1 problem is that he's got to live up to, not the hype, but the high expectations that he's going to fly into Baton Rouge and fix everything," he said. "A lot of people who voted for Blanco last time voted for Jindal this time saying, 'Boy, did we screw up.' I hate to sound negative, but he has nowhere to go but down."





Jindal Triumphant in Louisiana
By Gilbert Cruz
TIME Magazine
Sunday, Oct. 21, 2007


In a widely expected victory Saturday night, Bobby Jindal, a 36-year old Republican congressman, won the Louisiana gubernatorial election, becoming the nation's first governor of Indian-American descent and the youngest chief executive of any state.

Jindal took 54% of the vote in the state's off-year open primary, the first since Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, and became the first non-white politician to hold the state's highest office since Reconstruction.

Jindal, one of the few young rising stars in the GOP ran on a strong reform platform. "Don't let anyone talk badly about Louisana," he said during his Saturday night victory speech at a Baton Rouge Holiday Inn. "Those days [of corruption and incompetence] are officially over. There has never been a clearer mandate for our state."

For a while on election night, it wasn't particularly clear which was the more exciting matchup: at the front of the ballroom, Jindal's results flashed on giant screens continued to rise, while in the back, pockets of people stood cheering at the LSU-Auburn game.

In a region where college football is a religion, there was concern in the Jindal campaign about low turnout at the polls due to the game. At the end of the night, however, Jindal took almost 700,000 votes, the highest ballot numbers for a for a non-incumbent primary candidate in recent history. With a vote over 50 percent, Jindal was able to avoid a Nov. 17 runoff election.

Jindal, the son of Indian immigrants, is generally acknowledged to be an ambitious policy whiz kid. An Ivy League-educated Rhodes Scholar, he was appointed head of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, the state's largest agency, at the tender age of 24. At 28, he was tapped to head one of Louisiana's university systems. Two years later, he served in the Bush Administration as an assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services.

He first ran for governor in 2003 at the age of 32, losing by a mere four percentage points to current Democratic governor Kathleen Blanco. That defeat was attributed to his relative lack of elective experience and the potential racial discomfort in the state's rural north. Blanco, whose fortunes fell rapidly after the perceived bungling of her administration during and following Katrina, decided not to run for re-election, leaving the race open for Jindal, who led the field practically since he announced his candidacy.

Following his defeat in 2003, Jindal ran for and won the congressional seat in Louisiana's first district. Since then, the staunch conservative — who converted from Hinduism to Catholicism as a teenager — has traveled often to northern Louisiana, hitting up churches and pressing the flesh.

The strategy appears to have worked, as Jindal handily won the areas he lost to Blanco four years ago and that heavily supported white supremacist David Duke's bid for the governorship in 1991.

Perhaps realizing the difficulties of running to lead a state that has by and large elected white males to higher office, Jindal worked to minimize the significance of his ethnicity on the trail, using variations on the theme of, "the only colors that should matter are red, white, and blue."

And in a state that has long been stereotyped as corrupt and supportive of the good 'ole boy system, Jindal's victory is a sign that maybe, if the state is ever going to be turned around, now is the time to do it.

He has vowed to call a special session of the legislature shortly after his inauguration to "pass ethics reforms with real teeth" and has promised to institute a variety of 10- to 31-point plans that reflect his policy wonkiness.

As he put it on Saturday: "The rest of the country, keep your eyes on Louisiana." You should probably keep your eyes on Bobby Jindal, too.

President Bush poised to appoint
Mary Ann Glendon as U.S. ambassador to Vatican




Washington DC, Oct 25, 2007 (CNA).- It looks as though the well-known lawyer and pro-life feminist Mary Ann Glendon may become the newest U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

According to reports by ANSA in Italian, sources inside the Bush administration are saying that it is very likely that “President George W. Bush would appoint Mary Ann Glendon as the new US Ambassador to the Holy See."

Glendon is someone who is well prepared to serve in this post since she has worked with the Vatican frequently in the past. Her resume includes being appointed by Pope John Paul II to the newly created Pontifical Academy of Social Science in 1994, leading the 22-member delegation of the Holy See to the Fourth U.N. Women’s Conference in Beijing in 1995 and serving on the Holy See’s Central Committee for the Great Jubilee 2000.

The most recent Vatican appointment for Glendon came in 2004 when she was made the head of the Pontifical Academy for the Sciences.

Interestingly, in a speech that she gave at the U.N. this past May, Glendon spoke about the theme of faith and politics, a topic that Pope Benedict has been quite outspoken about of late.

The president of the pontifical academy said in her address that a challenge for religious and cultural leaders is to motivate "their followers to meet others on the plane of reason and mutual respect, while remaining true to themselves and their own beliefs."

Glendon explained that often "religion has often been exploited for political purposes," but that dialogue is also hindered by "not only misunderstandings about the faith of others, but also a poor grounding in one's own faith."

Mary Ann Glendon has also distinguished herself as a lawyer. She is currently the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University and teaches and writes on international human rights, comparative law, and constitutional law issues.

Cardinal Pell assailed by Anglican leader
over his views on climate change
By Barney Zwartz
The Age (Australia)
October 25, 2007


A BITTER rift over climate change has developed between a senior member of the Anglican Church and Sydney Catholic Archbishop George Pell.

Canberra Bishop George Browning, the Anglican Church's global environmental chief said Cardinal Pell was out of step with his own church and made no sense on global warming.

Bishop Browning also criticised the Federal Government for its "utter obsession" with growth and warned that climate change refugees would be a bigger problem than terrorists in a century of desperate struggle.

At the national Anglican synod in Canberra yesterday, Bishop Browning attacked the cardinal for saying Jesus said nothing about climate change. "It's almost unbelievable," said Bishop Browning, who is the chairman of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network.

"I wrote him a letter saying Jesus had an awful lot to say about the rich taking what belonged to the poor and about the heritage of the children, and as he spoke about both of these things he spoke about climate change."

Later, he told The Age that Cardinal Pell was an exception even in his own church. "I frankly don't know where he's coming from or why he says what he does. It doesn't make any sense to me. The contribution he should make as leader of the Catholic Church is muted because of his stance."

Cardinal Pell replied scathingly that church leaders should be allergic to nonsense. "My task as a Christian leader is to engage with reality, to contribute to debate on important issues, to open people's minds and to point out when the emperor is wearing few or no clothes," he said. "Radical environmentalists are more than up to the task of moralising their own agenda and imposing it on people through fear. They don't need church leaders to help them with this, although it is a very effective way of further muting Christian witness," he said.

Cardinal Pell said he was sceptical of extravagant claims of impending man-made catastrophes. However, the Vatican accepts that climate change is a serious threat to the world.

Bishop Browning said Australian politicians "were driven by their obsession with growth. The future is about sustainability, not prosperity on its own. Prosperity without sustainability is economic death."

On climate refugees, Bishop Browning said that over millenniums people moved when their environment changed.

"The 21st century will be a desperate struggle, especially for water," he said.

He said the science of global warming was settled and accepted even by US President George Bush.

"It is also settled morally. Jesus made it absolutely clear that the poor are not here to pay the bills of the rich, but that's exactly what's happening."

He told the synod: "It's not inevitable that humanity will face an apocalyptic world. To do something about it will cost us, but we will still have three meals a day and live in a comfortable house. We need to do it today. I want all of you to leave the synod today believing this is our core business, it's not (just) something greenie Christians do."

Meanwhile, Rosie Catt, of the Australian Anglican Environmental Network, said inaction on climate change amounted to genocide according to the United Nations definition.

"If we know climate change is having that effect on the most vulnerable people and we can do something about it, are we not guilty of the destruction of a way of life, in whole or part?" she said.

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Cardinal Pell has not said that nothing should be done about preserving the environmen!. All he has said is that there is no scientific consensus about global warming, and that there is no reason to be apocalyptic about it.

Former Philippine president leaves prison,
thanks Cardinal Vidal
by Santosh Digal




Manila, Oct. 26 (AsiaNews) – Former President Joseph Estrada accepted the pardon issued by President Arroyo, and thanked Card Ricardo Vidal for the important role he played in his release.

Estrada, who was ousted from power by a popular revolt in 2001, was convicted last September on corruption charges and sentenced to life in prison.

During his detention, Cardinal Vidal wrote a letter to President Arroyo, co-signed by Senate President Manuel Villar Jr and House Speaker José de Venecia Jr, asking Ms Arroyo to grant Estrada an executive clemency in the “spirit of national unity and reconciliation.”

In his reaction to being released, the former president said he was “very thankful” to Cardinal Vidal not only for the letter he wrote but also for the comfort he provided when he was in jail.

Mr Estrada announced that he was retiring from politics, saying that he had had enough.

“I really do not have any intention to run in any election,” he said. “All I want to do now is to be with my mother and take care of her.”

Estrada was in public service for almost 32 years — 17 years as the mayor of San Juan, a city of Metropolitan Manila, six as senator, six as vice president, and two and a half as President.

He was one of the most popular movie stars in the Philippines since the 1960s, and only quit making movies when he became vice-preisdent.

Normally, we would not even bother with pop stars who are nothing but self-centered exhibitionists and 'walking train wrecks', but this news item merits notice.

Britney church shocker
Daily Mirror (UK)
29/10/2007

Britney Spears is now set to outrage the Catholic Church with this kinky "confession" photo-shoot.



In the shortest of skirts, the troubled star flashes her fishnet stocking-clad legs in the confessional box while a handsome priest listens to her repenting.

In another "very naughty" pose for her new album Blackout, she even sits on his lap in the cubicle, an insider revealed last night. Well, Brit is a sin-ger...

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With the non-stop publicity about her - never mind if it is all negative - this woman's album is probably going to be a big hit. Did her publicists think it was necessary to out-Madonna Madonna in exploiting anti-Church sentiments by stunts like this?

Pell backs discrimination against gays
By Simon Lauder for AM
Australian Broadcasting Commission
Posted Tue Oct 30, 2007

I kept the headline as it appears in the online post because it says everything about MSM's choice to inflame pubilc opinion unnecessarily by making misleading headlines - which is usually what most readers retain of the news. The bias of the whole report is intended to make Cardinal Pell open to charges of discrimination for the sake of discrimination.


The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, has argued in favour of maintaining discrimination against gay couples, saying it is wrong to equate the position with any sort of racial discrimination.

Cardinal Pell's argument has the backing of a large Christian lobby group, which is flexing its muscle as the election draws nearer.

After being accused of contempt of the New South Wales Parliament this year, Cardinal Pell knows all too well the perils of preaching to politicians.

But last night in Sydney, launching his own book about religion and politics, he attacked those who say the church should not get political.

"The Greens, some Democrats and largely silent minority elements in both major parties would like to exclude religious considerations from public discussion," Cardinal Pell said.

Cardinal Pell sees a looming battle between religion and its right to discriminate against gay people, and the push to remove discrimination from laws.

"At the heart of this attack on the concept of exemptions for faith-based agencies, lies a false analogy between alleged discrimination against homosexuals and racial discrimination, and this is already beginning to appear in Australia," he said.

He says it is wrong to compare the ban on inter-racial marriage in the US decades ago with today's ban on gay marriage.

"Same-sex marriage and adoption changes the meaning of marriage, family, parenting and childhood for everyone, not just for homosexual couples," he said.

"Whatever issues of basic justice remain to be addressed, I am not sure that it is at all true to say that homosexuals today suffer the same sort of legal and civil disadvantage which blacks in the United States and elsewhere suffered 40 years ago and, to some extent, still suffer."

While Cardinal Pell was not taking questions about the election last night, a group which supports his view, the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), has just launched its election website.

Australian Christian Lobby managing director Jim Wallace says discrimination is not necessarily a bad word.

"[Discrimination] is not something that is necessarily a bad concept," he said.

"I think what we're talking about here is making sure that while we remove unfair discrimination, that we do not allow a very small part of the population to force their model for relationships to be adopted as the community norm, when it isn't."

He says the problem is that equal rights for gay families complicate the definition of family.

"It confuses children and it's suggested that this is a normal and healthy alternative," he said.

Earlier this year, the ACL persuaded Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd and Prime Minister John Howard to take part in a webcast to churches around the country.

It is now sending out about 500,000 flyers about the policies of the political parties.

"Kevin Rudd sits there a little more alone in his Party, so I think he'll have a reasonably hard time of it," Mr Wallace said.

"We've been pleased with what he has come out with at the moment.

"We would like to see a definitive statement about not allowing de facto marriage to be expanded to include homosexuals, but otherwise [we are] reasonably happy with the things that he's said.

"But we really do hope that he's able to hold that line once he's in government."

Belgian cardinal reflects on understanding, experiencing the liturgy

By Jerry Filteau
Catholic News Service
Oct. 29, 2007

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Understanding the liturgy begins with experiencing and living it, said a Belgian cardinal.

"Understanding the liturgy is far more than a cognitive exercise; it is a loving 'entering in,'" said Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Mechelen-Brussels, Belgium, in a talk on liturgical renewal Oct. 25 at The Catholic University of America.

"The uniqueness of the liturgy is that it gives pride of place to experience. ... First experience, first live the liturgy, then reflect and explain it," said the cardinal, who as a young theologian and liturgical expert in the 1960s was involved in drafting the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.

He said those who did not experience the liturgy before the council must have difficulty now imagining how much it has changed in less than half a century, since today "the new liturgical model is evident practically everywhere."

He noted that one major change after the council was in the "the relationship between the minister and the people."

Even church architecture, with the Communion rail separating priest and people, emphasized a distance between priest and people before the reforms, he said. The separation was so great that the liturgy often consisted of two parallel celebrations, with the priest celebrating the "official liturgy" in Latin while the people "set about their personal devotions," he added.

"The active involvement of the people in the liturgy is an unparalleled gift of the council to the people of God," he said.

While endorsing that participation, he also cautioned that "there is a shadow side" to it.

"Participation and mutual celebration can lead to a subtle form of manipulation. ... Those who serve the liturgy, both priests and laity, become its owners" instead of its servants, he said. This can lead to trivializing the liturgy, eliminating the sacred and turning it from the worship it is supposed to be into a mere social event, he added.

Cardinal Danneels said the trend he was describing is not universal, but it would be wrong to ignore it in any serious attempt to evaluate the state of liturgical practice some 40 years after the council.

"The liturgy is first God's work on us, before it is our work on God," he said.

"The acting subject of the liturgy is the risen Christ," he said, adding that the liturgy is "the continuation of his incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection."

"We attend the liturgy at God's invitation," he said. "The liturgy is not a feast we laid out for ourselves according to our own personal preferences. It is God's feast. We attend by invitation."

This does not exclude creativity in the celebration of the liturgy, and "creativity is actually called for," he said. "The problem lies with the boundaries of our intervention. One cannot simply transform and rearrange the whole thing. Changes have to be made with intelligence."

He called a deepening understanding of the liturgy by the celebrating community one of the primary concerns of Vatican II itself and of the church since then.

In approaching the question of understanding the liturgy, Cardinal Danneels said it is important first to see what sort of understanding should be sought.

"If the liturgy is the epiphany of God's dealings with his church, then the deepest core or heart of the liturgy will never be completely open to our grasp," he said. "There is indeed a hard core in the liturgy -- the mystery -- which is ungraspable. One can only enter into it in faith."

The liturgy "is not an object of knowledge in the commonplace sense of the word," he said. "It is not an object of knowledge at all, rather it is a source of knowledge, a source of understanding. ... Profound realities only gradually yield their full significance."

He said reaching this kind of understanding involves lived experience, repetition, silence, ritual, "letting the liturgy speak for itself."

"The liturgy needs time to deliver its riches. It has nothing to do with physical or clock time but with the spiritual time of the soul," he said.

Catechesis also has an important role in understanding the liturgy, he said. But he emphasized that the liturgy itself is not the place for such catechesis: That should come afterward, reflecting and building on the lived experience of the liturgy itself through the senses, symbols, hearing the proclaimed word, ritual immersion in the Christian mysteries.

In a brief question-answer session after his talk, the cardinal was asked to comment on Pope Benedict XVI's recent decision to permit wider use of the of the Tridentine Mass in Latin. In his decree, the pope said the Tridentine Mass celebrated according to the 1962 Roman Missal should be made available in every parish where groups of the faithful desire it. He also said the Mass from the Roman Missal in use since 1970 remains the ordinary form of the Mass, while celebration of the Tridentine Mass is the extraordinary form.

Cardinal Danneels said he thought the pope did so in the hope that giving wider access to the pre-Vatican II version would draw some Catholics attached to that rite, especially the followers of the schismatic late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, back into the church.

He said he has no objections to permission for wider use of the rite -- although "in Belgium it was superfluous; people are not asking for it" -- as long as those seeking it accept other teachings of Vatican II, such as those on religious freedom.

Cardinal Danneels' talk was sponsored by Catholic University's School of Canon Law as the inaugural Msgr. Frederick R. McManus Lecture, a new series honoring one of the leading figures in Catholic liturgical renewal in the English-speaking world in the second half of the 20th century.

Adding to the Britney article Teresa posted above....

COMMENTARY: Britney Spears, “Blackout” and Anti-Catholicism

By Deacon Keith Fournier
10/31/2007
Catholic Online

The continued growth of anti-Catholicism is only one more sign of a culture corrupted. Sadly, the entertainment industry seems to be the medium of the last acceptable prejudice. Britney Spears' new album "Blackout" promotes the mocking of a Catholic sacrament.

LOS ANGELES (Catholic Online) - Today marked the release of the new album by Britney Spears, ironically labeled “Blackout”. It is an apparent effort to resuscitate her sagging music career. The airwaves were filled with multiple “talking heads”, the new oracles of the “entertainment news” subculture. They waxed on about whether the recording will sell well and volunteered their feigned expertise as to the poor woman’s problems.

The daily media has been filled with an endless stream of self professed experts only too eager to give their take on how pitiable the decline of this pop stars’ life has been. The internet and blogosphere are abuzz with rants concerning her struggles with substance abuse, marital infidelity and impulse control. She seems to be single-handedly fueling the insatiable thirst for celebrity gossip; one more sign of a Western culture in moral decline.

However, beyond it all, Britney’s tragic effort to fuel her flagging career and increase her net worth, reveal again that the only acceptable discrimination in America these days is bigotry toward the Catholic Church. Accompanying the album, the consumer receives a series of photographs, two of which picture the singer provocatively posed and scantily clad with fishnet stockings. She is pictured with a handsome young Catholic priest.

The two are seated in what appears to be a confessional, the place within a Church where a penitent confesses their sins and receives Sacramental absolution from the priest, acting on behalf of Jesus Christ through the Church. In the first photo, Spears is turned away from the priest in a seductive pose, exposing her legs, clad in fishnet stockings. She is behind the confessional screen. In the second, she is on the priest’s lap. Britney is doing anything but confessing her sins. She appears, with apparent glee, to be tempting this young priest to succumb to temptation.

Among those decrying this anti-Catholic insult was the dogged defender of the Catholic Church, Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for the Defense of Religious and Civil liberties. Donohue called the pictures a “bottom of the barrel” stunt, "This is all the puzzle pieces coming together. This girl is crashing," said Donohue. "She's not even allowed to bring up her own kids because she's not responsible enough. Now we see she can't even entertain."

The Catholic league, based in New York City, also offered Kiera McCaffrey for Press comment. The League's Director of communications addressed what she rightly called a publicity stunt at the expense of the Catholic Church. She told MTV that the photographs were a “…cheap publicity stunt that is a way to get people to talk about Britney Spears' album without talking about her music, which is what they should be focusing on. All we see is how troubled this girl is now, especially with her family, losing her kids, with her career on a downward slide. And now she's put out this album and this is her tactic to promote it? She should be focusing on singing and dancing and trying to be an entertainer without mocking a Catholic sacrament."

Though still early, it appears that Britney’s album may be a hit, with some predicting it will reach the coveted number one spot on the charts by next week. One can only hope that Britney’s exposure to a confessional, even if meant to mock the Catholic Church, will be added to the mental images which occupy her sleepless nights during this troubled time in her life, as she struggles to regain custody of her children and make sense of the last few years. Perhaps the next time she approaches a confessional it will be to seek absolution and request a new beginning from the One who is able to give her the grace that she needs.

In the meantime, we can pray for Britney. We must also continue to stand up against the continued exploitation of the images of our Church by those who have no shame.

President-Elect of Argentina
Defends Pro-Abortion Position
and Favors "Sexual Choice"
By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman


BUENOS AIRES, October 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com)--The President-Elect of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, recently claimed to be "opposed to abortion", but her attempts to clarify her statement seem to affirm her party's pro-legalization position.

"I have always defined myself as being against abortion" she said in a radio interview days before the national presidential election, held on October 28th.

However, using rhetoric that is common among pro-abortion politicians in the United States, she clarified that "I don't think anyone is in favor of abortion" and added, "I don't believe that those who advocate the decriminalization of abortion are in favor of abortion. That would be an oversimplification."

Fernandez also stated her concern about the "stigmatization" of those who are in in favor of legalization, decrying the idea that "that someone is in favor of abortion and then because I'm not in favor of it I stigmatize them." She contrasted this view with her own, remarking that "I have a lot of respect for others' opinions."

In the same interview, Fernández also appeared to support civil union legislation for homosexual couples, stating that she favors "freedom of sexual choice for all of the men and women of Argentina", and reportedly calling same-sex relations "normal".

Homosexual unions legislation would be possible she said, although she eschewed responsibility for it, asserting that "it will be a topic that the Parliament will debate. It it isn't a matter that should be debated within the executive branch."

Fernández, who won over 40% of the vote in Sunday's elections, is a senator and member of the leftist Peronist party, which has a record of favoring abortion and promoting contraceptive use. She is also the wife of the current president of Argentina, Nestor Kirchner, whose health minister is emphatically pro-abortion.

Her husband's administration recently intervened in a well-reported case of a retarded woman impregnated by a relative, flying the woman to another Argentine province when doctors in her own province refused to perform an abortion on ethical and medical grounds.

Fernández, who has been criticized for her "frivolous" and "snooty" attitudes and lack of competence, is sometimes compared to Eva Perón, Argentina's popular young first lady of 1940s and 50s, although Fernández is two decades older than Peron was when she died in 1952. Time magazine has called her a "political fashion plate".

The conservative on-line publication Hispanidad remarked, shortly before her election, that "the ultimate demonstration of the frivolousness of Cristina de Kirchner consists in always defending her position against abortion, when her spouse and her party have done everything possible to introduce abortion into Argentina through the back door."

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

This is a story I should have posted two days ago, when Ms. Fernandez was elected.

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
elected president of Argentina
to succeed her husband
By Alexei Barrionuevo




Monday, October 29, 2007
BUENOS AIRES: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the wife of Argentina's president, Nestor Kirchner, has become the first woman to be elected president in Argentina's history, according to the latest official results published Monday.

[I find it strange and a deliberate error of omission that this story from the 'newspaper of record, the New York Times, does not even mention Argentina's first female president, Isabel Peron, third wife of the infamous two-time President Juan Peron. The anomalous circumstances that made her president does not cancel the fact that it happened.

In June 1974, the then 43-year-old Isabel took over from her 78-year-old husband when he became ill several months after his return to power by a landslide election victory after being in exile for several years. He died several days after he turned over power to Isabel, and she was president until 1976 when she was deposed by the military junta under General Videla. The junta which went on to a notorious reign of terror marked by a large-scale crackdown on dissidents leading to thousands of deaths and 'disappearances'.

Isabel, who was a cabaret dancer in Panama when Peron met her in exile, was never popular with the Argentines, who continue to idolize Eva, Peron's charismatic second wife who died of cancer before he was ousted by the military and driven to exile in 1965.]

Mrs. Kirchner, 54, the center-left Peronist party candidate and a senator, defeated a fractured opposition and avoided a runoff.

With 96 percent of the voting locations reporting, Mrs. Kirchner had 45 percent, ahead of Elisa Carrio, a center-left congresswoman, who had 23 percent, and Roberto Lavagna, a former finance minister, who had 17 percent, according to ministry of interior figures.

Mrs. Kirchner needed 45 percent of the vote outright, or 40 percent with at least a 10 percentage-point lead to avoid a runoff.

Rival candidates accused her party of "systemic theft" of ballots and other irregularities.

Mrs. Kirchner is the second woman to be elected leader of a South American nation in two years, after Michelle Bachelet, who became Chile's president last year.

Mrs. Kirchner declared victory late Sunday. In a speech, she said she felt a responsibility not only to lead her country, but "an immense responsibility for my gender." She also paid homage to her husband's accomplishments.

Mr. Kirchner, who sat behind her, stood as supporters chanted "Olé Olé, Olé, Nestor, Nestor!" He raised her arm.

"She is going to improve the country much more than her husband," said Graciela Aballay, 38, who watched Mrs. Kirchner's speech with her 9-year-old daughter, Maria Victoria.

More than anything, Mrs. Kirchner's victory would serve as a referendum on the four years under her husband, who steered Argentina out of its worst economic crisis in 2001, when it defaulted on $80 billion in loans.

Argentina is poised to record a sixth year of growth averaging about 8 percent. It is enjoying higher prices for exports of soybeans, corn and meat, has increased its reserves and reduced unemployment and inflation.

While voters appeared to favor a continuation of Mr. Kirchner's policies, the next president faces the challenge of taming inflation and a looming energy crisis.

Despite approval ratings of more than 60 percent, Mr. Kirchner decided in July not to run for re-election, in what many analysts believe is a strategy to rotate the couple through the Pink House, the presidential palace here, for 12 years. Argentine election law allows a former president to run again after waiting four years on the sidelines.

Mrs. Kirchner grew up in La Plata, once known as "Eva Perón City," the birthplace of the beloved wife and powerful first lady of General Juan Domingo Perón. Mrs. Kirchner was born seven months after Mrs. Perón, known as Evita, died of cancer.

The Kirchners met in law school in La Plata, where they were activists in the Peronist movement. They later moved to Mr. Kirchner's home province of Santa Cruz, in Patagonia, where Mrs. Kirchner was elected a senator before her husband began his political career.

Early in her political career, Mrs. Kirchner was nicknamed "Queen Cristina" by other politicians, a reference to her controlling personality. Facing a fractured opposition in the current election, she campaigned lightly, spending much of the past two months traveling in Europe and the United States trying to woo foreign investors and making clear that, if elected, she would seek to improve Argentina's standing abroad.

Argentina under Mr. Kirchner has embraced the notion of regional integration and has benefited from a stronger relationship with Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, who agreed to refinance $5 billion of Argentina's debt.

Despite her apparent victory, several rival candidates Sunday reported voter irregularities in some Peronist strongholds. "Each time a citizen went to vote, the voting authority at the table said there aren't ballots for your party," said Patricia Bullrich, the campaign chief for Carrió. "They said: 'O.K., you still have to vote. Vote for a blank slate, but you have to vote.'"

Bullrich singled out La Matanza, an industrial town on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, but also said that ballot theft had occurred throughout the province of Buenos Aires.

Political analysts called the charges exaggerated.

Jean-Marie Lustiger

by Rev. George W. Rutler
Crisis Magazine Online
10/29/07

Journalists trying to assess the life of Jean-Marie Lustiger (1926-2007) are like the crowd at the foot of Mount Sinai trying to figure out why Moses was complicating their lives. An eloquent sadness in him was too ancient for any one race to claim; and when, in 1999, he read his own mother's name, Gisele, at a public remembrance of deported and dead French Jews and added "ma maman," he spoke with a voice older than Exodus, and as old as the first day outside Eden.

His parents were non-practicing Ashkenazi Jews, emigrants to France from Bendzin in Poland in the First World War, and his father survived his mother in Auschwitz in 1943. On a visit to Germany in 1937, he stayed with an anti-Hitler family of Protestants and read the New Testament for the first time. In 1940, his sister joined him in converting to Christianity while under the protection of a Catholic family in Orléans whose bishop baptized Aaron, adding the names Jean-Marie. The pain of losing his mother in such a crucible of evil ached all the more from his father's sense of betrayal. Charles, who kept a hosiery business, was of radical political views and held the tradition of the generations his one vital link to moral cogency. When Jean-Marie was ordained a priest, Charles watched his son from the rear of the cathedral, and the beauty of heaven that can seem harsh on earth was there that hour.

His life from then on would be rattled by lesser men on every side for whom he was not enough of this or that. Charles had tried to get the chief rabbi of Paris to annul his son's baptism, and the Jerusalem Post announced his death with a headline calling him an "apostate." In another quarter, the shadows of Maurras and Petain lurked long. When Pope John Paul II named Parisian-born Lustiger archbishop of Paris in 1981, Archbishop Lefebvre publicly objected to the appointment of "someone who is not truly of French origin."

Lustiger was a rabbinical clone of Wojtyla, who gave him the red hat in 1983. This was clear from his first Mass as Bishop of Orléans. His predecessor, Guy-Marie Riobe, had genuflected before every trend of the day, leaving the diocese a material and spiritual shambles, and Lustiger did not mention his name. At the Mass, when all the people joined in the conclusion of the Eucharistic Prayer as they had been recently taught to do, Lustiger firmly placed his hand on the altar and said, "This is mine."

I first knew him from his visits to New York, where he spoke of modern superficiality as the sentimental seed of dire cruelties. The former chaplain of the Sorbonne had studied social science there with the worst man in the world, Pol Pot, and he knew the heights and depths of man, as well as the deadly shallows. Even so, he was astonished, as an apostle and anthropologist, that when he raised a theological question at the dining table of an American cardinal, an auxiliary bishop sprang to his feet and sang an Irish song amidst gales of laughter.

I said Mass with him in his residence in Paris shortly before the 1997 World Youth Day there, which would gather one million people. The French government had tried to block the whole event. He said his part of the Mass in English, which he was trying to perfect for the great event, and assigned to me the rest in French. Afterwards in the sacristy, he asked, "Where did you learn to speak our language the way you do?" The pregnant ambiguity of the compliment, or its opposite, was a vintage way of the French being French.

Many wept on his last visit to the other 39 Immortels at the Académie Française a few months before his death from cancer. They did not question his place in Paris as a prince, and more than that. And when he carried the cross each Good Friday from Notre Dame to Montmartre, no one doubted that he was perfectly cast to do that from above. "For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead" (2 Macc 12:44).

BUT HAS ANYONE HEARD OF THE 2000 SCIENTISTS WHO SHARE IT WITH HIM?

What does it say of the state of journalism that hardly anyone in MSM has done any stories about Gore's co-winners, the 2000 or so scientists belonging to the United Nations Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change?

Unfortunately, I can't access Wall Street Journal online, but I did get this item from Fox News SPECIAL REPORT today:

UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM:
MEET JOHN CRHISTY

A member of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says he and many other scientists do not see global warming as a developing catastrophe and there is no smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for the warming that does occur.

John Christy is the director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. He and thousands of others on the U.N. panel share half the Nobel Prize also awarded to Al Gore.

But he says he cringes when he hears 100-year weather forecasts when it is incredibly difficult to accurately predict the weather five days from now.

He writes in The Wall Street Journal, "Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us."

He points out that a recent CNN report on climate change made much of the shrinking Arctic sea ice cover, but did not mention that winter sea ice around Antarctica set a record maximum last month.

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

OK, now I can see why someone so politically 'incorrect' would not be played up in the media. So I went and googled John Christy. First, his background:


John R. Christy is a climate scientist whose chief interests are global climate change, satellite sensing of global climate, and paleoclimate. He is best known, jointly with Roy Spencer, for his version of the satellite temperature record.

He is a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He was appointed Alabama's State Climatologist in 2000. For his development of a global temperature data set from satellites he was awarded NASA's Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, and the American Meteorological Society's "Special Award."

Christy was a lead author for the 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the US CCSP report Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere - Understanding and Reconciling Differences.

He received his Ph. D degree in Atmospheric sciences from the University of Illinois. He also has a master's degree in divinity from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

Christy has also said that while he supports the AGU declaration, and is convinced that human activities are a cause of the global warming that has been measured, he is "still a strong critic of scientists who make catastrophic predictions of huge increases in global temperatures and tremendous rises in sea levels."

In The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary (March 2007), Christy is quoted as saying, "I've often heard it said that there's a consensus of thousands of scientists on the global warming issue and that humans are causing a catastrophic change to the climate system. Well I am one scientist, and there are many that simply think that is not true."

He has previously argued that satellite climate data do not show a trend toward global warming, and even show cooling in some areas.

He now acknowledges that the human contribution to climate change is not insignificant, Christy asserts that global warming will have beneficial effects on the planet and that increased CO2 emissions from human activities are a net positive.

Christy was a contributing writer to "Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths," published by Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2002.


A fact sheet on Christy includes the following KEY QUOTES:

17 May, 2000
Testified before Sen. John McCain and the Senate Commerce Committee that there wasn't sufficient evidence of global warming to warrant taking action to reduce emissions.
"It is our great fortune - because we produce so much of it - that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. In simple terms, carbon dioxide is plant food. The green world we see around us would disappear if not for atmospheric carbon dioxide."
Source: Transcript, John Christy's testimony before Senate Commerce Committee 5/17/00

"The factors that influence climate are too numerous to document, much less understand from our present level of ignorance. ...The alarmist media reports...become the source of downstream hysteria promoted by those with extreme environmental agendas. Such pronouncements by ideological environmentalists that the globe's weather is worsening are factually false."
Source: "Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths" CEI, 2002

13 May, 2003
"Will increases in CO2 affect the climate significantly? Are significant changes occurring now? Climate models suggest the answer is yes, real data suggests otherwise."
Source: Testimony, House Committee on Resources

12 December, 2003
"I don't see danger. I see, in some cases, adaptation, and in others something like restrained glee, at the thought of longer growing seasons, warmer winters, and a more fertile atmosphere."
Source: Cato Institute Conference - Global Warming: The State of the Debate (2003)

20 October, 2006
"This notion of the greening of the planet [from human-caused CO2 emissions] ... generally is a positive benefit."
Source: Associated Press (October 20, 2006)

2 May, 2007
"Half of the snow was gone when Hemingway wrote 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro.' That tells you right there that the cause of that was not human effects on the climate. There is no upward trend in the temperature for that region. The reason the snows are going away is not because of temperature changes, but probably because of a lowering of the cloud amount and less precipitation."
Source: CNN, Glenn Beck special "Exposed: The Climate of Fear," May 2, 2007

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

So, between a professional politician like Al Gore, who has no science background and has decided to rely only on scientists' reports that support his view of climate change, and a world-renowned scientist like John Christy whose professional life has been spent in studying climate change (and is also a Baptist minister), I'll take Christy's word.

It may not necessarily be the last word on climate change - and he does not claim it is - but it's a more realistic, balanced, and more importantly, informed perspective than that of the professional alarmists. Cardinal Pell must read Christy and other open-minded scientists like him. I only wish media would publicize all sides of the debate equally.

Thank you for posting the tribute to Cardinal Lustiger.

Venezuela's Congress OK's
lifting Chavez term limits
By Saul Hudson




CARACAS, Nov. 2 (Reuters) - Congress passed President Hugo Chavez's proposal to scrap presidential term limits on Friday in a package of constitutional changes that Venezuelans are likely to approve in a referendum next month.

Pro-Chavez lawmakers, who dominate the legislature, shouted "yes, yes," and chanted the president's political slogan "Fatherland, socialism or death" in approving the measures.

Polls show many Venezuelans oppose centralizing presidential power but favor sweeteners the socialist leader has included in the package, such as reducing the workday to six hours and giving social security benefits to unregistered taxi drivers.

The opposition, the Roman Catholic Church, university students and rights groups have denounced the scores of proposed changes to the constitution as an authoritarian power grab by a man who has vowed to rule for decades.

Protests against the proposal have turned violent.

Wall Street is concerned that the package will further chill investment, especially after the anti-U.S. president decreed a raft of nationalizations earlier this year with the vow of making the major oil exporter a socialist state.

The package also would strip the central bank of its autonomy, give Chavez control over international reserves, empower authorities to detain citizens without charge and open the way to censoring the media in so-called political emergencies.

In speech after speech, Chavez's supporters in Congress said the package addressed the needs of poor people that governments before Chavez had neglected for decades.

But the proposal has caused a rare rift in official ranks.

"Today is a black page in the history of this country and its democracy," said lawmaker Ismael Garcia, whose party has broken with Chavez over the plan it says is a step back toward the Soviet era.

With only a month available for a debate on the measures, the president easily should win a vote that mainly will be a reflection of his popularity among the majority poor who benefit from his spending of the OPEC nation's oil bonanza on clinics, schools and food subsidies, pollsters say.

Still, government officials are working to mobilize Chavez supporters because of worries abstention could be high.

The referendum package introduces new legal concepts such as "social property" and "collective property," promoting them above individual interests as part of a constitutional goal of creating a socialist economy.

Without the law change, the man who calls Cuban leader Fidel Castro his mentor would leave office in 2013.

Chavez, who has been in power since 1999, won a landslide re-election last December and says he needs more time to create a socialist state that can help counter U.S. "imperialism."

Wall Street economists fear that as he campaigns for the referendum he will increase spending in a nation where rampant inflation is a sign the economy is overheating with periodic shortages in staples such as milk.

In recent weeks, he has hiked teachers' and medics' pay up to 60 percent.

"(The) reforms coupled with the weakness of personal property rights in Venezuela provide massive disincentive to any foreign investment in this country," Bear Stearns said.

Some traditional Chavez voters worry about his handling of the economy, which is increasingly dependent on high international oil prices.

"I don't agree with this reform," Carlos, a 54-year-old fisherman who used to vote with the president, said in the Caribbean coastal village of Puerto Maya.

"Chavez has made a mistake. He wants to turn Venezuela into Cuba and that's wrong," he said, without giving his last name. "If he carries on like this, he's going to fall from power."

(Additional reporting by Fabian Andres Cambero and Ana Isabel Martinez)


Constitutional amendments would allow
Chavez to run for president indefinitely;
Dec. 2 referendum would ratify changes
By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER


Chavez supporters celebrate Congress vote.

CARACAS, Venezuela, Nov. 2 (AP) - Venezuela's pro-government National Assembly overwhelmingly approved constitutional reforms on Friday that would greatly expand the power of President Hugo Chavez and permit him to run for re-election indefinitely.

The 69 changes to Venezuela's Constitution now go to citizens for a Dec. 2 vote.

The proposed changes, Chavez's most radical move yet in his push to transform Venezuela into a socialist state, threaten to spur a new wave of political upheaval in this oil-rich South American country already deeply divided over Chavez's rule.

The amendments would allow the government to expropriate private property prior to a court ruling and take total control over the Central Bank, create new types of property managed by cooperatives, and extend presidential terms from six to seven years while allowing Chavez to run again in 2012.

All but seven of the assembly's 167 lawmakers voted for the changes by a show of hands.

"Today the Venezuelan people have a pencil in their hands to write their own history, and it's not going to be the history of the elite," said pro-Chavez lawmaker Earle Herrera.

Concerns that the measures will weaken civil liberties have been raised by university students, opposition parties, human rights groups and representatives of Venezuela's Roman Catholic Church.

Critics also worry the reforms would allow Chavez to remain in power for decades like his close friend Fidel Castro of Cuba.

Calling the reforms "unconstitutional," dissident lawmaker Ricardo Gutierrez railed against pro-Chavez congressmen for approving amendments "that don't have anything to do with giving more power to the people."

Chavez, a retired army lieutenant colonel who was first elected in 1998 on a populist platform and has repeatedly defeated his political adversaries at the polls, denies the reforms are antidemocratic.

Most "Chavistas," as the president's supporters call themselves, back the reforms as a novel means of giving neighborhood-based assemblies called "communal councils" greater decision-making power as Chavez steers Venezuela toward what he calls "21st-century Socialism."

Among other changes, the reforms would enshrine socialist concepts in the constitution, reduce from 18 to 16 the minimum voting age and increase the number of signatures required to trigger a presidential recall vote.

Government supporters wearing red — the color of Chavez's ruling party — cheered outside the assembly in downtown Caracas as lawmakers left the building and walked to the nearby National Elections Council, where officials scheduled the Dec. 2 referendum on the reforms.

Jose Manuel Gonzalez, president of the Fedecamaras business chamber, warned of grave consequences if voters agree to the amendments.

"If this reform is approved, it destroys the future of our institutions, isolates us as a nation, brings us back to the past and distances us from modernity and progress," he told Union Radio.

On Thursday, protesters staged the biggest demonstration against Chavez in months, and appeared to revive Venezuela's languid opposition. Soldiers responded with tear gas canisters, plastic bullets and water cannons to scatter tens of thousands who said the amendments would violate civil liberties and derail democracy.

The pro-government VEA newspaper on Friday predicted an overwhelming victory and urged government supporters to join "a life or death battle in which the present and future of the Venezuelan nation is in play."





An earlier story is about an anti-reforms protest demo:


Troops clash with Venezuelan protesters
By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER



CARACAS, Venezuela, Nov. 2(AP) - Soldiers used tear gas, plastic bullets and water cannons to scatter tens of thousands who massed Thursday to protest constitutional reforms that would permit Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to run for re-election indefinitely.

Led by university students, protesters chanted "Freedom! Freedom!" and warned that 69 amendments drafted by the Chavista-dominated National Assembly would violate civil liberties and derail democracy.





It was the biggest turnout against Chavez in months, and appeared to revive Venezuela's languid opposition at a time when the president seems as strong as ever. Students promised more street demonstrations over the weekend, but no opposition-led protests were planned for Friday.

"This is a dictatorship masked as democracy," said Jorge Rivas, an 18-year-old student. "Chavez wants our country to be like Cuba, and we're not going to allow that to occur."

Authorities broke up the protest outside the headquarters of the country's electoral council, reporting that six police officers and one student were injured. But students said dozens of protesters were hurt during the melee. The local Globovision television network broadcast footage of several police beating an unarmed protester with billy clubs.

Student leader Freddy Guevara said it was not immediately clear how many students were arrested, and he urged local human rights groups to help verify the number of detained protesters.

Students hurled rocks and bottles, and a few lifted up sections of metal barricades and thrust them against police holding riot shields. Students retreated later when police fired plastic bullets.

Rock-throwing

The Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship turned 75 onNovember 1.

KING TUT UNMASKED




LUXOR, Egypt (AFP) — The true face of ancient Egypt's boy king Tutankhamun was revealed on Sunday to the public for the first time since he died in mysterious circumstances more than 3,000 years ago.

The pharaoh's mummy was moved from its ornate sarcophagus in the tomb where its 1922 discovery caused an international sensation to a nearby climate-controlled case where experts say it will be better preserved.

"The face of the golden pharaoh is amazing," said Egyptian antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass, pulling back the linen bandages to reveal a body resembling a badly burnt skeleton.

"It has magic, it has mystery, it has beauty and his buck teeth are similar to the rest of his family's. Putting the mummy in this case will make the golden king live forever."

Made pharaoh at the age of nine, Tutankhamun became famous with the discovery of his tomb and the treasures within by Briton Howard Carter.


King Tut's golden mask -
as we have 'known' him for decades.

His iconic solid gold burial mask weighs 11 kilogrammes (24 pounds), encrusted with lapis lazuli and other semi-precious stones.

The mummy had to be reconstructed after Carter cut it into 18 pieces in order to gain access to amulets and other jewellery, said Mustafa Wazery, director of the Valley of the Kings.

"What you will see is a beautiful face," Wazery told journalists ahead of the mummy's displacement. "He's a good-looking boy, with a nice smile and buck teeth."

Every day hundreds of visitors file through his tomb in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor, bringing with them into the royal tomb bacteria, humidity and other pollutants.

"The mummy risked being reduced to dust because of the rising levels of humidity due to the visitors," said Hawass, who heads the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

"The mummy was already damaged by Howard Carter, who used sharp tools to remove the golden mask," said Culture Minister Faruq Hosni.

He said Carter damaged the mummy by "exposing it to burning sunshine for many hours" in the desert landscape.

A silicone representation of the face of the legendary pharaoh, who died around 3,300 years ago at the age of just 19, was reconstructed in 2005 using images collected through CAT scans of his mummy.

Egyptian, Swiss and Italian experts have deduced that Tutankhamun died after an injury to his left leg led to rapid gangrene, rejecting a previously popular theory that the king had been killed by a blow to the neck.

When the tomb was discovered, the pharaoh's embalmed body was encased in three sarcophagi, one of which was made from solid gold.

Tutankhamun, the 12th pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, reigned for 10 years. Theories that he was assassinated stemmed from the fact that he was the last ruler of his dynasty.

The pharaoh Akhenaton the Heretic was thought to have fathered Tutankhamun, but the identity of his mother is not known for sure. It may have been Nefertiti, a foreign princess, or his wet nurse Maya.

The high priest Ay succeded Tutankhamun for four years - also marrying his widow Ankhesenpamon - and he was followed by the military leader Horemheb who ruled for 26 years until he ceded power to Ramses, founder of the 19th dynasty.


Egypt unveils King Tut's mummy
to public
By ANNA JOHNSON


LUXOR, Egypt, Nov. 4 (AP) - The linen-wrapped mummy of King Tut was put on public display for the first time on Sunday — 85 years after the 3,000-year-old boy pharaoh's golden enshrined tomb and mummy were discovered in Luxor's famed Valley of the Kings.

Archeologists removed the mummy from his stone sarcophagus in his underground tomb, revealing his shriveled leather-like face and body.

"The golden boy has magic and mystery and therefore every person all over the world will see what Egypt is doing to preserve the golden boy, and all of them I am sure will come to see the golden boy," Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told reporters under the intense Luxor sun.

Hawass said scientists began restoring King Tut's badly damaged mummy more than two years ago after it was removed briefly from its sarcophagus and placed into a CT scanner for the first time for further examination. Much of the mummy's body is broken into 18 pieces that Hawass described looked like stones that were damaged when British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the mummy, took it from his tomb and tried to pull off his famous golden mask.

But Hawass said he fears a more recent phenomenon — mass tourism — is further deteriorating Tut's mummy. Thousands of tourists visit the underground chamber every month.

"The humidity and heat caused by ... people entering the tomb and their breathing will change the mummy to a powder. The only good thing (left) in this mummy is the face. We need to preserve the face," said Hawass, who wore his signature Indiana Jones-style tan hat.

The mystery surrounding King Tutankhamun and his glittering gold tomb has entranced ancient Egypt fans since Carter first discovered the hidden tomb on Nov. 4, 1922, revealing a trove of fabulous gold and precious stone treasures.

Archeologists in recent years have tried to resolve lingering questions over how he died and his precise royal lineage. Several books and documentaries dedicated to the young pharaoh, who is believed to have been the 12th ruler of ancient Egypt's 18th dynasty and ascended to the throne around the age of 8, are popular around the world.

In an effort to try to solve the mysteries, scientists removed Tut's mummy from his tomb and placed it into a portable CT scanner for 15 minutes in 2005 to obtain a three-dimensional image. The scans were the first done on an Egyptian mummy.

The results did rule out that Tut was violently murdered — but stopped short of definitively concluding how he died around 1323 B.C. Experts for the time though suggested that days before dying, Tut badly broke his left thigh, apparently in an accident, that may have caused a fatal infection.

The CT scan also provided the most revealing insight yet into the life of ancient Egypt's most famous king. He was well-fed, healthy, yet slightly built, standing at 5 feet, 6 inches tall at the time of his death. The scan also showed he had the typical overbite characteristic of other kings from his family, large incisor teeth and his lower teeth were slightly misaligned.

The unveiling of Tut's mummy comes amid a frenzy of international publicity for the boy king. A highly publicized museum exhibit traveling the globe drew more than 4 million people during the initial four-city American-leg of the tour. The exhibit will open later this month in London and after it will make a three-city encore tour in the U.S. beginning with the Dallas Museum of Art.

The Egyptian tourism industry is hoping to capitalize on that interest and draw tourists to Luxor to see something they couldn't at the museum — Tut's mummy. More than 9 million tourists visited Egypt last year — up from 8.7 million the previous year, the Egyptian Tourist Authority said.

The tourists will begin viewing the mummy Monday, Hawass said. The mummy will remain in the tomb indefinitely — unlike other Egyptian royal mummies, who are displayed in museums.

Canadian tourist Bryan Wadson said he and his wife would try to make it back to the Valley of the Kings for the second time on Monday because they missed the mummy Sunday.

"We're running out of time, but will try," he said after taking a photo with Hawass.

But not every tourist was eager to find out that Tut will be removed from his sarcophagus and put on display.

"I really think he should be left alone in quiet, in peace," said British tourist Bob Philpotts. "This is his resting place, and he should be left (there)."

John Taylor, an assistant keeper at the British Museum's department of ancient Egypt and Sudan, said tourists won't be the only ones to benefit by the display of Tut in a climate controlled case.

"In some ways, it could be advantageous to monitor the condition to see if the mummy is stable," he said by telephone from London.

Hawass said experts will begin another project trying to determine the pharaoh's precise royal lineage. It is unclear if he is the son or a half brother of Akhenaten, the "heretic" pharaoh who introduced a revolutionary form of monotheism to ancient Egypt and was the son of Amenhotep III.

"Everyone is dreaming of what he looks like. The face of Tutankhamun is different from any king in the Cairo museum. With his beautiful buck teeth, the tourists will see a little bit of the smile from the face of the golden boy," Hawass said.

Page change.... Preceding page has post on the 'unmasking of King Tut', with pictures now.

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

TURKEY
Ankara gives glimmer of hope
for rights of Ecumenical Patriarchate


Ankara, Nov. 3 (AsiaNews) –The Turkish government appears willing to open up to finding a solution to the insistent problem of minority rights, in particular regarding the Ecumenical Patriarch, although it may be too early for any celebrations.


Bartholomew I with the Turkish Foreign Minister.

These were the conclusions drawn by the Patriarch Bartholomew at the end of a second round of meetings in Ankara with Foreign minister, Ali Babacan, Education minister Huseyn Celik, Justice minister, Ali Sahin, and State minister, Besir Atalay, all of whom are directly involved in the issue of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and minorities in general.

In the meetings, Bartholomew put forward the issue of the properties contested by the Patriarchate, the restitution of 24 foundations abusively occupied and the properties of the Orthodox minority, as well as the re-opening of the Theological School of Halki.

The ecumenical patriarch has explicitly sought the minister’s aid in resolving these difficult questions. Faced with objections based on so-called constitutional impediments, Bartholomew pointed out that the foundations of minority property are protected by the Lausanne treaty and that they cannot be given over to Ottoman foundations that were regulated by the Turkish State.

For their part, the ministers have assured their desire to find a solution to all of the pending questions, because, they maintained that the minorities who have been on Turkish soil for centuries are art of the wealth and multi cultural inheritance of the nation. Positive comments in diplomatic circles accompanied these meetings.

It was however noticed that the government's goodwill to resolve the minorities issues is not what is under discussion, rather the pressure for a “deep sense of State” (trends in the administration, economics and the military), as an excuse to put off indefinably a solution to these problems.

Certainly the worsening situation with the Kurds and the subsequent re-emergence of Turkish nationalism doesn’t help.

How cool! Thanks for posting Teresa. When I was young, I was very interested in archaeology and Egypt and checked out as many books as I could. The condition of King Tut's face is amazing considering he's been dead for more than 3,000 years.

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

What do you mean, when you were young! Lori, you're only 18 - and I'm three times your age at least... Anyway, I do agree, King Tut unmasked comes out very well indeed, despite his buck teeth - truly beautiful for a mummy. I don't believe I've ever seen any mummy that looked so good.

TERESA

Outside of Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, I believe Cardinal Pell is the only other cardinal so far to have celebrated the tradtional Mass after the Pope's Motu Proprio. Sorry for not seeing the item earlier.


Cardinal Pell celebrates
traditional Mass

SYDNEY, Australia, NOV. 2, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Cardinal George Pell will be the first archbishop in the Sydney Archdiocese in 40 years to celebrate the Mass according to the 1962 Roman Missal, reports the Oriens Foundation.

The archbishop of Sydney will preside Saturday at a Mass said in the extraordinary form at St. Mary’s Cathedral. The event is a celebration on the occasion of Benedict XVI’s apostolic letter "Summorum Pontificum," published in July.

The letter, issued "motu proprio," on one’s own initiative, explained new norms allowing for the use of the 1962 missal as an extraordinary form of the liturgical celebration. The norms took effect Sept. 14.

The Australia-based Oriens Foundation, which promotes understanding of the Tridentine rite, said in a press statement that the Mass "represents a significant event in the life of the local Church."

Gary Scarrabelotti, the Oriens Foundation chairman, said that he hopes that "Summorum Pontificum" will provide the Church "with a splendid opportunity to draw to the attention of the Catholic people, and to the wider community, the great cultural and spiritual merits of the traditional form of Catholic worship."

President Bush Presents Medal of Freedom
to Eight Who Inspire



WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 (AP) — President Bush on Monday presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, to recognize contributions in science, the arts, literature and the cause of peace and freedom.

"Each of them, by effort and by character, has earned the respect of the American people, and holds a unique place in the story of our time," Bush said at an East Room ceremony.

The honorees were:

— Gary Becker. The economist and 1992 Nobel Prize winner was honored for broadening the understanding of economics and social science, and for helping to improve the standard of living around the world.

— Oscar Elias Biscet. A human rights advocate and champion of freedoms in Cuba, Biscet is a political prisoner in Cuba who is being recognized for his fight against tyranny and oppression.

— Francis Collins. The director of the National Human Genome Research Institute was honored for his leadership of the Human Genome Project and for greatly expanding the understanding of the human DNA.

— Benjamin Hooks. The NAACP's former executive director is considered a pioneer of the civil rights movement.

— Henry Hyde. The Illinois Republican served for 32 years in the House, where he was known for his battles against abortion rights and his leading role in the impeachment of President Clinton. He was honored as a "powerful defender of life" and an advocate for strong national defense, the White House says.

— Brian Lamb. The president and CEO of C-SPAN was recognized for elevating the public debate and making the government more accessible.

— Harper Lee. The author of the beloved novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" was honored for her contribution to American literature.

— Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. The president of Liberia and the first woman elected president of an African nation, she is credited with working to expand freedom and healing a country torn apart by conflict.

The Medal of Freedom was established by President Truman in 1945 to recognize civilians for their efforts during World War II. The award was reinstated by President Kennedy in 1963 to honor distinguished service. It is given to those deemed to have made remarkable contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, culture, or other private or public endeavors.

Harvard prof picked for Vatican post
By ANDREW MIGA

I know we had a previous report on this, in almost identical terms, but AP filed this 'new' story anyway- bylined to boot!



WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 (AP) - President Bush plans to nominate Harvard University law professor Mary Ann Glendon to be his new U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

Glendon, 69, is an anti-abortion scholar and an opponent of gay marriage who also has written on the effects of divorce and increased litigation on society. Her 1987 book "Abortion and Divorce in Western Law" was critical of the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a legal right to abortion.

The White House announced Monday that Bush will nominate Glendon to the post, which requires Senate confirmation.

Glendon was appointed by Pope John Paul II in 1994 to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, a panel that advises the Roman Catholic church on social policy.

Glendon has served as an adviser to the Vatican in several capacities. In 1995, she was the first woman to lead a delegation of the Holy See at the United Nations Women's Conference in Beijing. She has also served on the Pontifical Council for the Laity and as a consultant to the Pontifical Council on the Family.

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who last summer named Glendon to co-chair his campaign advisory committee on the constitution and courts, praised the choice.

"She will serve our country with the honor and dignity we expect from those who represent our country's values abroad. While I may have lost her trusted counsel to our campaign, our country has gained an extremely gifted ambassador," Romney said in a statement.

A native of Dalton, Mass., Glendon taught at Boston College and became a visiting professor of law at Harvard in 1974. She became a full professor there in 1986.

Zeffirelli Recalls Paul VI's Help With "Jesus of Nazareth"

Pope Thanked Director for Work

ROME, NOV. 5, 2007 (Zenit.org).- When the television miniseries "Jesus of Nazareth" was released 30 years ago, Pope Paul VI personally thanked Franco Zeffirelli for his work; but the series was a success only because of the Pontiff's help, the director said.

At an Oct. 25 lecture marking the new academic year at the Pontifical Lateran University of Rome, Zeffirelli recalled some of what went on behind the scenes during the filming of the more than six hours of "Jesus of Nazareth."

As a youth, Zeffirelli studied at St. Mark's Convent in Florence. There, Cardinal Giovanni Montini, then archbishop of Milan and the future Paul VI, visited a group of Christian university youth involved with Catholic Action. It was at the school that Zeffirelli got to know the future Pope.

Cardinal Montini went there frequently, the director recalled, to spend what the cardinal called "the most happy hours of his day."

The 84-year-old director related how the cardinal, who knew of the youth's aspirations to the theater, told him jokingly, "In a different era, they would have kept you from being buried in consecrated land, but now the Church has changed, so much so that we welcome you as an instrument for spreading good ideas and good hope."

"Later," Zeffirelli said, it was the Pope who, "with his discreet network of influence, brought 'Jesus of Nazareth' forward through some difficulties. In the end, this order was given: 'Zeffirelli or no one.'"

A career

As the Italian director embarked upon his career and advanced in it, he said he realized "the weapon I had in my hands and how it could be decisive for the lives of thousands of people, as much for good as for evil."

"When you have the possibility of encouraging men who suffer and of broadening their horizons of hope, you feel a responsibility that is too big for the poor man that you are," he said.

"Jesus of Nazareth" is just one of the some two dozen productions that Zeffirelli directed.

Since its debut, he affirmed, letters of thanks and affection have been nonstop. And a few notes have even recounted a decision to follow a religious vocation, thanks to the inspiration received through the film.

"I only did what I could do as the Christian that I am in the depths of my spirit," the director said.

Falling in place

According to Zeffirelli, "Jesus of Nazareth" progressed as if "it had wind in its sails."

He recalled that Elizabeth Taylor was to play the part of Mary Magdalene. But when she fell ill, Anne Bancroft replaced her. Bancroft accepted less pay than what she was accustomed to, thus saving the production money.

The director also remembered the role of Monsignor Peter Rossano, former rector of the Pontifical Lateran University, who acted as consultant during the preparation and filming in Morocco.

Zeffirelli said his own faith was invigorated with the film. He described one moment, in particular: "During the scene of the Last Supper, there was a climate of absolute silence and deep spirituality in the room, while outside, a sandstorm raged. The moment was broken by the sobbing of my co-workers.

"I want to think there was an energy outside of us, which was invoked in order to make that sublime moment. And in effect, it is one of the most beautiful and spine-tingling moments of the film."

"We suspected the intrusion of a supreme force guiding us," he added, and because of this, "everyone knew that we were doing something very important."

Thank you

Zeffirelli spoke of the moment when the Pope expressed his gratitude for the movie: "When Paul VI received me in a private audience after viewing the film in 1977, he thanked me and asked me what the Church could do for me. I told him: 'I would like this work to be brought to Russia as well.'"

"He looked at me and told me prophetically: 'Have faith; soon the flag of Our Lady will wave above the Kremlin, in place of the red one.'

"On Dec. 8, 1991, the feast of the Immaculate Conception," Zeffirelli recalled, "the red flag with the sickle and hammer that waved above the Kremlin for decades was replaced with the Russian Federation flag."

Reactions to Bush pick for envoy to Vatican
By Peter Schworm
Noston Globe
November 7, 2007



Mary Ann Glendon, a prominent legal scholar and a papal adviser poised to become the next US ambassador to the Vatican, is known for staunchly defending Catholic doctrine while striking a conciliatory tone with opponents, colleagues said yesterday.

Supporters said Glendon would bring a measured sensibility to a politically sensitive position, but opponents criticized her as a social conservative in lockstep with the Vatican's opposition to contraception and gay marriage.

In recent years, Glendon has been a leading legal specialist on same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and was tapped this summer to lead an advisory group on judicial matters for presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

The White House announced Monday that President Bush will nominate Glendon, a Harvard Law School professor who has advised the Vatican for more than a decade, to the position, which requires Senate confirmation.

Glendon, 69, also an opponent of abortion rights, is considered an authority on family law and social policy, bioethics, and international human rights.

In 2004, she became the highest-ranking female adviser in the church when Pope John Paul II chose her to lead the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, a powerful panel that helps the church establish social policy.

Raymond L. Flynn, the US ambassador to the Vatican from 1993 to 1997 and a longtime friend of Glendon's, said her sharp mind and even temperament would serve her well in the diplomatic realm.

"She's an extraordinary legal mind and a very loyal American," said Flynn, a former Boston mayor. "She has dealt with the great scholars of the world, but is still a really down-to-earth person."

Flynn, who recently returned from a two-week visit to Rome, said top Vatican officials were excited at Glendon's appointment because of their long relationship. Glendon was an adviser to John Paul II and in 1995 became the first woman to lead a Vatican delegation, at the UN Women's Conference in Beijing.

Glendon, who could not be reached for comment yesterday, would succeed Francis Rooney, the envoy for the past two years.

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley praised her nomination. "Dr. Glendon's career is marked with numerous achievements in law, education, and international affairs that provide her exemplary credentials for this post," he said.

Flynn said Glendon, who has been discussed as a potential Supreme Court nominee in recent years, is committed to "social and economic justice rooted in the philosophy of the church" and does not cling to political partisanship.

"American political opinion is often at odds with the Catholic Church," Flynn said. "It's a fine line you have to walk, and sometimes it can be very difficult. But she's really not a political person. She approaches a lot of issues from a legal standpoint and keeps personal opinions out of the mix."

With heightened tensions between the Vatican and the United States over the war in Iraq, which the Vatican has sharply opposed, naming someone with Glendon's judicious mindset is well-timed, said the Rev. Robert Imbelli, a Boston College theology professor who has worked with Glendon.

"She has a very gracious presence that lends itself not so much to polemics but to debate," he said. "That's very much needed at this delicate juncture, which makes her choice so important."

But critics said Glendon's views represent the right wing of the church and are out of step with mainstream Catholics.

"She has also been an outspoken critic of feminism, tending to write it off as a relic of the 1970s," said the Rev. Richard P. McBrien, a University of Notre Dame theologian, "all of which endears her to conservative Catholics and makes her an ideal choice for President Bush."

During the clergy sexual abuse scandal, Glendon criticized news organizations for exaggerating the extent of the abuse and singling out Catholic priests.

Jon O'Brien - president of Catholics for a Free Choice, which supports abortion rights - called Glendon a reactionary.

"Dr. Glendon's stance on many matters of importance is not representative of Americans' views on these issues, let alone those of American Catholics," O'Brien said in a statement. "Her appointment comes at a time when the global community needs more critics of the Vatican's policies on sexual and reproductive rights."

But David O'Brien, professor of Roman Catholic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, described Glendon as "a centrist" with a deep understanding of the Vatican and the American church.

"She's a good choice for this administration and has always stood well with the church hierarchy," he said. "She certainly knows her way around the church."

A native of Western Massachusetts, Glendon received her bachelor's and law degrees from the University of Chicago and taught at Boston College from 1968 to 1986. She came to Harvard in 1986.

She is married with three children and lives in Newton.

Harvard Law School professor Charles Fried described Glendon as a "terrific and terrifically sensible person who has managed to be faithful to the church without ever being extreme or strident.

"She always understands where people are coming from even if she doesn't agree with them," he said.

Tony Blair 'will convert
to Catholic faith within weeks'
By JAMES CHAPMAN
Daily Mail (UK)
Nov. 9, 2007



Tony Blair is preparing to convert to Roman Catholicism within weeks, it emerged last night.

The news prompted demands from followers of the faith for the former prime minister to renounce his previous support for abortion.

Mr Blair's long-expected switch to the faith of his wife and four children is expected to come at a Mass in the private chapel of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales.

The Catholic newspaper The Tablet says the service of conversion will take place this month.

Mr Blair has regularly attended Catholic services in recent years, both with his family and alone. He has also visited Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor John Paul II.

The Tablet said Mr Blair has received instruction from two priests, RAF chaplain John Walsh and Father Mark O'Toole, the cardinal's secretary.

A candidate for reception into the Catholic Church is usually received by their parish priest.

The cardinal's involvement, as Archbishop of Westminster, would suggest Mr Blair's process of conversion began while he was in Downing Street.

Mr Blair's spokesman did not deny the report, saying: "This is the same old speculation", but a friend said it was "not without substance".

News of the imminent move drew calls from leading Catholics for Mr Blair to renounce his backing in Parliament for abortion up to 24 weeks.

Tory MP Ann Widdecombe, who converted to Catholicism over her opposition to women priests in the Church of England, said: "I hope we will get a public statement repudiating his votes on abortion. Indeed, the Church will require it.

"The Church requires that we say at the point of reception that everything the Church teaches is revealed truth. There's no hedging.

"Mr Blair has taken a very public stand on the matter of abortion, and the Church stand being very publicly different, we are entitled to know what he now thinks.

"Without that, it cannot possibly be a serious move."

As premier, Mr Blair clashed frequently with Catholic leaders over his liberal attitudes to gay rights and other issues.

In a side story, Roman Polanski is to make the film version of The Ghost, a novel about a disgraced former premier which author Robert Harris admits was inspired by Mr Blair. Mr Harris was once a trusted friend of Mr Blair, but they fell out over the invasion of Iraq.

Archbishop Burke says
Catholic identity in danger
from secularized culture:
By Hilary White


ST. LOUIS, Missouri, November 8, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Catholic identity is in danger of being lost in the current “completely secularized” culture says Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis Missouri.

Burke is known as one of the most faithful defenders of the unborn among the US Catholic hierarchy. He told a Fox news reporter that although “some people don't accept everything the church teaches,” he has to keep teaching the truths of the faith.

He urged faithful Catholics to keep teaching because their Catholic identity is in danger of being lost.

“Why? Because we live in a culture that's completely secularized.” He reiterated the warnings made by Pope Benedict XVI against relativism, the belief that all religious faiths, all moral codes and all lifestyles are equally valid.

Burke warned against “a kind of relativism, a kind of hedonism, materialism and so forth, these kinds of tendencies of our culture, for us we have to resist them.”

Archbishop Burke has taken a leading role for Catholics opposed to the sexualized and secularized cultural trends, particularly in his stand against pro-abortion politicians who continue to trade on the name “Catholic.”

His humble and warm personal style has endeared him to the faithful who have met him, but he has not hesitated to forthrightly defend the Church.

This week, he warned two Catholic women in his diocese that they would be placing themselves outside the Church and incur automatic excommunication if they went ahead with a planned mock “ordination” on Sunday. The two women, who belong to the radical feminist organisation Womenpriests, announced they would be “ordained” this weekend.

These mock ordinations have been popular with anti-Catholic organisations in recent years as media stunts to push forward the feminist and leftist movement that has held sway in the Church since the 1960’s. The women have already announced they will ignore the warning and were going ahead with what Burke said would constitute an "act of schism."

“My vision for the Archdiocese, I’ve always used the words, the new evangelization to lead the faithful of the Archdiocese to live their Catholic faith with a new enthusiasm and a new energy that will make a difference in our world," said Burke.

The Archbishop can now be heard on a weekly radio programme on St. Louis stations answering children’s questions about the Catholic faith and related topics.

By ZARAR KHAN


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 9 (ap) - Pakistani police placed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest Friday, uncoiling barbed wire in front of her Islamabad villa, and reportedly rounding up thousands of her supporters to block a mass protest against emergency rule.


Bhutto addressses supporters and media
behind barbed wire at her home in Islamabad.

The White House called for Bhutto's release, saying it was "crucial for Pakistan's future that moderate political forces work together to bring Pakistan back on the path to democracy." A government spokesman promised she would be free by Saturday.

On Friday, Bhutto twice tried to leave in her car, telling police: "Do not raise hands on women. You are Muslims. This is un-Islamic." They responded by blocking her way with an armored vehicle.

The former prime minister had planned to defy a ban on public gatherings and address a rally in nearby Rawalpindi, where police used tear gas and batons to chase off hundreds of supporters who staged wildcat protests and hurled stones. More than 100 were arrested.

The city mayor said they had reports suicide bombers might attack the rally. Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim said there was a restraining order against Bhutto, telling her to stay at her Islamabad home and not proceed to Rawalpindi because of a security threat.

"I expect that (the order) is all over by now," Azim told The Associated Press. "She will be free to move tomorrow."


AP's earlier story is below.


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani police placed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest Friday, uncoiling barbed wire in front of her Islamabad villa, and reportedly rounded up thousands of her supporters to block a mass protest against emergency rule.

Bhutto twice tried to leave in her car, telling police: "Do not raise hands on women. You are Muslims. This is un-Islamic." They responded by blocking her way with an armored vehicle.

The former prime minister had planned to defy a ban on public gatherings and address a rally in nearby Rawalpindi, where police used tear gas and batons to chase off hundreds of supporters who staged wildcat protests and hurled stones. Dozens were arrested.

Further afield, a suicide bombing at the home of a government minister in the northwestern city of Peshawar killed four people. Minister for Political Affairs Amir Muqam was unhurt.

The attack underscored the threat posed by religious extremists in this Islamic nation that President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Bhutto are sparring over. It was cited by Musharraf as the primary reason for imposing the state of emergency last Saturday.

But most of the thousands of people rounded up countrywide since have been moderates — lawyers and activists from secular opposition parties, such as Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party. The mass detentions have fueled criticism that Musharraf — who seized power in a 1999 coup — declared the emergency to maintain his own grip on power.

Friday's crackdown showed that Musharraf was not letting up on his political rivals, despite saying a day earlier that parliamentary elections would go ahead by mid-February, just a month later than originally planned. His announcement came after intense pressure from the United States, his chief international supporter.

It also dimmed prospects that Bhutto and Musharraf would soon form an alliance against Islamic extremists that Washington has pushed for.

Speaking to reporters by phone between her two attempts to escape her home, Bhutto said her supporters would "continue to fight for democracy and the rule of law." She also repeated demands that Musharraf step down as army chief by next week, when his presidential term expires.

Bhutto's decision to join in anti-government protests against Musharraf is another blow to the military leader whose popularity has plummeted this year amid growing resentment of military rule and failure by his government to curb Taliban and al-Qaida militants.

Scores of police, some in riot gear, monitored Bhutto's supporters outside her house as they repeatedly tried to remove barbed wire and steel and concrete barriers.

At least 30 Bhutto supporters were arrested, including a woman who showed up with flowers. An old bearded man who showed up with a sharp machete and a goat he planned to sacrifice to bring Bhutto good luck was simply shooed away by police.

There was confusion over whether authorities had served Bhutto with a formal detention order. Officials said they had, but Bhutto's aides said they had not received it — and would not accept it. An intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media, said Bhutto was ordered detained for 30 days, but the government did not confirm that.

Bhutto twice tried to leave for Rawalpindi inside a white Landcruiser with tinted windows, surrounded by about 50 supporters, including several lawmakers.

After being turned back a second time, her way blocked by an armored vehicle, she got out of her car and joined her supporters, who chanted "Go Musharraf Go!" She then delivered an address heard by reporters on the other side of the barricades.

"I want to tell you to have courage because this battle is against dictatorship and it will be won by the people," she told her followers.

Her supporters said they would only be further emboldened by Friday's clampdown.

"We are going to besiege" Islamabad, said Abida Hussain, a former ambassador to the United States. "We will not go away. Our party activists have been mobilized to move out and take to the streets."

Authorities appeared determined to stop them. Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, or PPP, claimed Friday that 5,000 of its supporters had been arrested in the last three days across the eastern province of Punjab. But security officials said only 1,100 had been detained.

In Rawalpindi, the normally bustling city near Islamabad where Bhutto had planned to hold her rally Friday, hundreds of police — some on horseback, motorcycles or in armored vehicles — kept a tight grip on the largely empty streets and moved fast against any hint of protest.

There were repeated clashes between stone-throwing protesters, who set piles of garbage and tires on fire in the streets, and police, who at times fired tear gas shells from an armored personnel carrier.

Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said authorities had stopped the rally because suicide bombers had gathered in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

"The rally was stopped only and only because of our security concerns," he said on state-run Pakistan Television.

Rawalpindi's mayor had earlier in the day warned of a "credible report" that six or seven bombers were preparing a repeat of last month's attack of Bhutto's jubilant homecoming procession in the southern city of Karachi after eight years of exile. She escaped unharmed, but more than 145 people died in the attack, blamed on Islamic militants.

Rawalpindi has also been hit by a series of suicide attacks, targeting the military.

Associated Press writers Stephen Graham in Rawalpindi, Riaz Khan in Peshawar and Munir Ahmad in Islamabad contributed to this story.