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The Religious
Consultation Report
Published by The Religious
Consultation on Population, Reproductive Health and Ethics
Volume 8 No. 2
April 2005
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Table
of Content
The pro-life lie
A poem to celebrate life
Using condoms to fight AIDS gathering
momentum
The crowning of the President –
Jan. 21, 2005
Chicago judge says embryos are human
beings
One in five U.S. teens have sexual intercourse
by 15
Integrating recovering sex offenders
into faith-based communities
Tsunami and spiritual relief
U.N. population projections: Dire
news for the planet
India removes proposed family planning
incentive
Terri Schiavo and Catholic Moral Theology
Understanding pro-choice values
Book reviews
Movers and Shakers
Critically acclaimed documentary,
On Hostile Ground
Acrobat
Reader pdf version
The
pro-life lie
People should be judged by how they
honor
the ideals they most loudly profess.
By Daniel C. Maguire
Okay, “pro-lifers,” here goes.
Archbishop Tutu (would that we had even one bishop like him
in the U. S.) writes: “Some 2 million children have died
in dozens of wars during the past decade...This is more than
three times the number of battlefield deaths of American soldiers
in all their wars since 1776 .... Today, civilians account
for more than 90 percent of war casualties.”
Children are the prime casualties of modern war. As Professor
Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University writes: “Children
in urban war zones die in vast numbers, not just due to violence,
but also from diarrhea, respiratory infections, and other
causes, owing to unsafe drinking water, lack of refrigerated
foods, and acute shortages of blood and basic medicines in
clinics and hospitals.” Pregnant women and their fetuses
suffer from these same lethal deprivations, and pregnant women
and their fetuses are being bombed in their homes.
If you who sanctimoniously wear the “pro-life” banner
were really pro-life — and pro- fetus — endangering
women, children, and fetuses would bother you, and we would
be hearing your voices raised powerfully in peace protests
around the world.We don’t. Therefore we must conclude
that you are not “pro-life” and that if you say
you are, you lie.
American military leaders in Iraq have been quoted as saying,
“We don’t do body counts.” (Interesting, since
even “The Mob” does body counts.) The respected
British Journal, The Lancet, has counted the bodies of civilians
killed in Iraq thus far. They counted more than 100,000 civilian
deaths, most due to U.S. military action.
President Bush is responsible for those murders because he entered
this war without the Declaration ofWar that the Constitution
requires (Article one, Section 8). A cowardly Congress in
a week of infamy (October 3-10, 2002) limply handed over their
war-declaring rights to him. Congress essentially gave the
President open-ended authority to use unrestricted power,
which could mean nuclear weapons, whenever he alone deemed
it appropriate. How did those who call themselves “pro-life”
respond to this appalling assault on the Constitution and
on life? They voted en masse for George W. Bush, the slaughter-master
of Iraq, the killer of civilian men, women, and children,
including pregnant women and their fetuses — in a war
that Pope John Paul called a “defeat for humanity.”
Mr. Bush said he saw their vote in the last election as an
endorsement of his war.He was right. The election was a chance
to vote against that war, but, overwhelmingly the so called
“pro-life” vote was for war.
Can you understand why we call you liars?
Those who oppose all abortions and also all wars must find a
new motto, since, in the United States, “pro-life”
has been co-opted by right-wing militarists.
Sister Joan Chittester writes of a large, front-page, fourcolor
photo in The Irish Times showing a small Iraqi girl: “Her
little body was a coil of steel. She sat knees up, cowering,
screaming madly into the dark night. Her white clothes and
spread hands and small tight face were bloodspattered. The
blood was the blood of her father and mother, shot through
the car window in Tal Afar by American soldiers while she
sat beside her parents in the car, her four brothers and sisters
in the back seat.”
Indifference to this atrocity and all war crimes like it is
criminal and sinful in the extreme. Indifference to such suffering
by those who canonize themselves with the “pro-life”
insignia — and who recently voted for more war —
is even worse. Such hypocrisy should be called by its name.
Its name is fraud.
Top (Table of Contents)
A
poem to celebrate life
Poet Elliot O. Lipchik
attended a
“naming” celebration for a baby, replete with animal
performers and a booming band. The experience
stirred the poet to dream of a gentler welcoming into life.
What’s My Name?
Speak the truth as you look me in the eye
not with microphonic emotion blasting
across an algic pond, but with
a resonating hum silence of the deep
feeling and love
Hold me in a protective embrace that lightens my burden
No holy water sprinkles or crosses to evoke
obsolete prophets and false gods
No public pronouncements or promises
to be broken as easily as crumbling
a loaf of bread.
Give me a name, a simple one with ancestral residues
Dance with me in rhythm to your heart
with a beat steady strong and close as when
I lay enclosed in the womb
Give me your breast as a connection
to all the womanly strengths of the past
Touch me with silent tenderness
I vow to return the same.
Top (Table of Contents)
Using
condoms to fight AIDS gathering
momentum — in the Catholic church
The ground is beginning to shift beneath the Catholic
Church. Its once stalwart stance — the absolute denial
of using condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS ¡ª
is beginning to erode here and there. The clergy are starting
to speak out:
- The bishop in Mozambique, South Africa.
- Cardinal Daneels in Belgium, a clear candidate in the
next Papal election.
- Cardinal Cormac Murphy O¡¯Connor in England.
- The Spanish bishops who attended the recent bishops' conference
in Madrid.
- And finally, a voice from Italy, from inside the Vatican
itself: Cardinal Georges Cottier, theologian in the pontifical
household, and one of Pope John Paul II's preferred theologians.
Spain speaks
In early 2005, the spokesperson for the Spanish
bishops' conference announced, "The time has come
for a joint strategy in the prevention of such a tragic pandemic
as AIDS, and contraception has a place in the context of the
integral and global prevention of AIDS." In this
statement, the Spanish bishops were not rejecting the role
of abstinence or fidelity. They were simply saying that all
available methods should be used to stop the pandemic.
Yet the statement caused quite a stir, and the
bishops had then to backpedal. The next day, the Conference
issued a further statement reinforcing that the Church had
not changed its stance on condom use. The Conference clarified:
their statement must be understood "within the meaning
of Catholic doctrine which says the use of condoms implies
immoral sexual conduct."
A voice from Italy concurs
However, within days, Cardinal Cottier, a close ally of the
pope and the most senior member of the clergy among all of
the voices heard so far, told the Italian news agency Apcom
that the use of condoms was “morally legitimate.”
Cottier called it a way to save lives in the poorest regions
of Africa and Asia, where taking the time to instill the concepts
of abstinence and fidelity is not medically practical.
The Catholic Church has always held that intercourse expresses
heterosexual marital love and must always further the goal
of creating new life. Cardinal Cottier explained that his
proposing a “legitimate” use of condoms is an exceptional
circumstance. He repeated that condoms should not be used
as contraceptives because doing so would encourage immoral
sexual conduct. However, the Cardinal also pointed out that
during the sexual act, there is a risk of transmitting death
as well as bringing life. Given the immediacy of the threat,
using condoms becomes the lesser of two evils in this moral
argument. It is an argument that has been proposed by bishops
in France and Spain as well. The Irish even find a precedent
in Catholic history for such thinking.
The Irish propose a solution
The Irish Independent offered a solution to the Church’s
moral dilemma. In following the controversy spurred by the
Spanish bishops’ statement, the newspaper offered a way
for the Church to get itself out of “the moral corner
into which it has painted itself” by citing St. Thomas
Aquinas as a precedent.
Thomas Aquinas, the saintly theologian of the Middle Ages,
thought that prostitution, although morally wrong, should
be tolerated for the greater good. Aquinas believed that prostitutes
eased male antisocial behavior that posed a threat to women
everywhere. Essentially,Aquinas distinguished between what
is morally ideal and what goes on in the real world.He stressed
the need to serve the greater good.
Despite the fact that many bishops and some theologians in
the Church believe that using condoms is immoral, using condoms
prevents death by the thousands, which is obviously the greater
good in this century. It is, says the Irish Independent, the
real- world response to the AIDS pandemic.
The newspaper alleges that even people who are “basically
well disposed towards the Church” fail to understand
why it is risking lives for a teaching that seems “at
best highly eccentric and dated.” Perhaps if the Church’s
hierarchy were more yielding to the common sense approach
of using condoms for prevention, it might be a more credible
voice when promoting abstinence and fidelity as other ways
to fight AIDS.
Amen to that.
Roman Catholic teaching on abortion
is pluralistic.
There is a strong theological tradition in favor of the
right to choose an abortion and there is a conservative
“no-choice” view. Neither of these views is official
and
neither of them is more Catholic than the other.
Top (Table of Contents)
The Crowning
of the President
by Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D.
Co-director, WATER (Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics
and Ritual)
Participating Scholar of The Religious Consultation
I had to see for myself the spectacle of George W. Bush’s
second inaugural. Quite the show it was, a sickening reminder
that insanity rules in the nation’s capital as security
fences worthy of San Quentin and empty buses lined nose to
nose chocked off any semblance of freedom of assembly.
My Mennonite pastor friend Cindy Lapp and I bundled up and
bustled downtown. The temperature was in the low 30’s;
when the sun departed it was downright cold. We knew that
many of our friends around the world would have wanted to
be there to convey their anti-war sentiments, their contempt
for Bush’s unjust domestic policies, and their outrage
that this country would spend upwards of $40 million to party
while tsunami survivors need clean drinking water. I wore
a pink scarf (Code Pink is a feminist anti-war group) and
a peace pin, enough to make clear I was not part of the fur
coat, big hair, high heels, party set.
Little shocks me from this administration, but the absurdity
of this scene took a prize. Picture the beautiful expanse
of Washington, DC, along Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol
to the White House, a distance of about 1.3 miles, lined with
military personnel stationed every 15 feet or so. Security
is the latest make-work project of the Bush Administration.
Police trainees with their backs turned to the crowd were
interspersed with the soldiers for reasons that remained obscure.
Sharpshooters stood atop the buildings; helicopters hovered.
Police cars zipped about.
To get this close we had to pick one of several entrances to
the cordoned-off zone and go through a pat-down search. An
earnest young man asked me if I wanted a woman to do the search.
Only in the interest of time did I say no! The dried fruit
and nuts in my pockets passed muster. No backpacks allowed;
the pile of them and their contents that people discarded
in order to enter reminded me that waste is a sin. I had not
seen gates so stout since I did an internship in a prison
some years ago. We were now inside.
We picked the right entrance because on arrival at our viewing
site we were pleased to see so many protestors. Creative signs
and chants lent a festive air. We stood cheek by jowl with
people who were there to cheer their president. One visiting
woman instructed her children on the various branches of the
military as their units came by. The kids were just cold and
wanted to go back to the hotel. I hope that will be their
enduring memory and not the guns and swords. We did not apologize
for shouting “End the war,” “Play music, don’t
shoot.” But it was obvious from some chilling looks that
people had not come from all that way to have free speech
rain on their parade. Democracy sneaks up when you least expect
it, folks.
Security personnel were everywhere. One fellow looked like
something out of a movie: thin, plainclothes, sunglasses at
a rakish angle, earpiece, chewing gum, pacing our section
like a nervous cat, scanning the crowd for dangerous customers.
If I had met him alone on a street I would have clutched my
cell phone to call the police. It was bizarre, but he was
obviously a honcho security dude, some high ranking Secret
Serviceman, a reversal of serious proportions.
There were really two parades. The first was a phalanx of police
on motor bikes, followed by black vans, cars, emergency vehicles
of all sorts. Wedged inside the tangled mess was the limousine
carrying George W. Bush, the most precious package of all.
He was behind tinted glass, waving at what looked like the
wrong side of the street when he got even with us. Spectators
were only allowed on our side and he seemed to be turned the
other way waving at no one. I was not surprised. I executed
the pivot I learned watching young activists, turning my back
in a non-violent gesture of disgust, shouting “Stop the
war” in a vain but cathartic effort to influence foreign
policy. Then he was gone, the parade seemed over. More tangles
of black vehicles followed—one protected the vice presidential
limo—but it looked more like military maneuvers or the
Mafia on holiday than a parade.
The real parade came later. This had only been the warm up
act, the President’s way to get to the reviewing stand.
All I could think of were those cold children as Cindy and
I, along with thousands of other protestors, left the scene
of the crime before the marching bands began. Millions of
dollars in Homeland Security Funds for the District of Columbia
had just been spent to assure George Bush’s safe passage
from the swearing in to the reviewing stand. Talk about sin.
And don’t talk about disaster if/when some real security
problem arises in DC and there is no money to prevent it.
We wove our way around street closings and metal fences to
the 12th Street entrance to the prison-like enclosure on the
theory that the closer to the White House (17th Street) the
more furs and boots and Republican red scarves we would see.
It was bleacher seating by invitation and ticket only at that
point. At one street corner we were denied access to the zone
while fur-wearing folks ahead of us were ushered in sans identity
checks by a Secret Service officer. He claimed they were congressional
people. I wished for more legal observers because such is
the stuff of law suits. After all, this was not a private
night club with bouncers, but a public event on public land.
What you are wearing is irrelevant though it seemed to be
the coin of the realm there.
When the President was safely ensconced in his bubble of a reviewing
stand, security apparatus was suddenly torn down and the hoi
polloi were allowed in. A short time later we exited at 14th
Street into a cordon of helmeted DC police (someone suggested
they looked by armadillos in their rippled security vests)
who were holding protestors at bay. Why, I wondered as two
blocks below the gates were wide open. Sanity had little place
at the inaugural event. Things were tense there as we headed
home to collect our children. I learned later on the evening
news that the armadillos unleashed their pepper spray shortly
after we left. Several protesters and police were injured.
It was pointless as the gates were wide open two blocks away.
In his inaugural address George W. Bush said piously: “There
is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred
and resentment and expose the pretensions of tyrants and reward
the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force
of human freedom.” We experienced the antithesis
of freedom on the streets of Washington. President Bush prattled
about “the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world"
while we lived tyranny here in the name of security. The one
thing Mr. Bush did say in his speech that rang true was, “The
survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the
success of liberty in other lands” because his administration
has all but killed liberty here.
If Inaugural Day is any indication, now that George Bush wears
the crown for his second term, we in the U.S. need all the
help we can get from free people around the world. More is
the pity.
Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D., Co-director, WATER
Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual
8035 13th Street Suites 1,3,5
Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 USA
301 589-2509 301 589-3150 (fax)
mhunt@hers.com
www.hers.com/water
Top (Table of Contents)
Chicago
judge says embryos are human beings
Judge rules that fertility clinic error can be
charged as "wrongful death."
A Chicago area county judge ruled that life begins
at fertilization, and therefore, a frozen embryo destroyed
in error in a Chicago fertility clinic was a human being.
Consequently, the embryofs parents may file a
wrongful-death lawsuit.
The judge's ruling was based on his belief that
an embryo is a human being, regardless of whether or not it
resides in a womb. As a result, the frozen embryo's parents
are legally able to sue for compensation, as would any other
parents who have lost a child. The judge maintained that his
ruling is backed by the Illinois Legislature's definition
of when life begins.
Opponents of the ruling allege that this decision, thought
to be the first of its kind in the country, will be overturned
on appeal. However, say pro-choice supporters, the ruling
itself could discourage doctors from practicing reproductive
medicine and sets an unnerving legal precedent. Pro-life supporters
applauded the judge's ruling but realistically expect the
case to move to the Illinois Supreme Court.
In the past, courts have allowed homicide charges
for fetuses killed when mothers were
killed.However, un-implanted embryos have never been given
similar legal status.
Although the parents in the case have been given permission
to request a new hearing on the issue of wrongful-death, legal
experts conclude that the case against the clinic's negligence
is really a breach-of-contract case, not a wrongful-death
action.
Top (Table of Contents)
One in five
U.S. teens have sexual intercourse by age 15
Research from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen
Pregnancy has revealed these numbers about the incidence
of sexual intercourse among teens in the U.S. by age group:
4% of 12-year olds
10% of 13-year olds
19% of 14-year olds
Source Popline, May-June 2003
Top (Table of Contents)
Integrating
recovering sex offenders into faith-based communities
Debra Haffner is the Co-Director of the Religious
Institute on
Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing.
Reverend Debra W.Haffner, one of our Participating
Scholars and a member of our Board, has just published Balancing
Acts: Keeping Children Safe in Congregations, an online resource
by the Unitarian Universalist Association.
The website, a manual on sex offenders and faith-based communities,
addresses policies to educate children and adults about sex-abuse
prevention and screening, along with ways to keep children
safe from sexual abuse, assault, and harassment. It also suggests
strategies on how to include a treated sex offender in congregational
life.
It is the first resource in the U.S. that directly addresses
integrating sex offenders into faith-based communities.
As anyone watching the news these days knows, child sexual
abuse is being revealed as a pervasive and devastating public-health
problem. Many denominations have been roiled by allegations
of sexual abuse by clergy, staff, and volunteers who work
with children.
Sex-offender registries now let us know when a person with
a history of sex offenses enters our congregations, but most
congregations are ill-equipped to handle such disclosures.
Debra has spent part of the last year researching this issue,
interviewing congregations and clergy with experience in these
matters, and meeting with experts.
Although this e-manual is designed for Unitarian Universalist
congregations, it is helpful to congregations of all faiths.
Debra has developed an interfaith version for Christian and
Jewish congregations that will be published in hard copy this
spring.
You can find more information about the manual on the homepage
of the Unitarian Universalist Association: www.uua.org.
The manual is also available as a downloadable
pdf at www.uua.org/cde/ethics/balancing/BalancingAct.pdf.
Top (Table of Contents)
An
eyewitness report
Tsunami and spiritual relief
By Ouyporn Khuankaew, Participating Scholar
International Women’s Partnership for Peace and Justice
Chiang Mai, Thailand
On December 26th 2004 the tsunami that swept through South and
Southeast Asia took more than 200,000 lives, leaving countless
people suffering. Food, clothes, shelter, and medicine from
around the world poured into the area from countries trying
to help. However, sustaining life for many of these people
goes beyond material needs. Religion is a resource that helps
people in less materialistic cultures get through difficulties.
Regretfully, spiritual support from others was less forthcoming.
Two stories
Migrant workers from Burma were not entitled to material assistance
because of their illegal status in Thailand. However, material
help was less important to them than performing a Buddhist
ceremony for loved ones they had lost.
When I arrived to counsel these groups a month after the tsunami,
I participated in a Buddhist ceremony for families who could
not find the bodies of their dead to give them a proper cremation.
During the ceremony, a monk chanted sutras and then called
the names of the dead, urging them to release themselves from
all attachments. After the ceremony, an elderly mother’s
face cleared, showing deep relief. She said that she could
go back to Burma now. She believed that her dead children
had found peace.
A Thai woman construction worker and her husband from the
poorest area of Thailand miraculously survived the tsunami.
She told me that when she was hit by the wave and was underwater,
her mind focused on two things: a monk respected in her region
and a legendary local queen worshipped highly today. She said,
“While I was under the strong current full of mud,
I had a clear vision of the monk and queen’s faces and
called out their names. That brought me the strength to emerge
through those waves. When I emerged, I found a coconut tree
and grabbed it firmly, watching other people float away and
drown. I held on for almost half an hour. My hands were very
tired, but I had so much faith that I would be safe that I
did not give up.”
The couple survived, but lost everything, including a
big paycheck because their boss died in the tsunami. Without
anger or frustration, the woman calmly told me, “We
are so lucky that we did not die and that we did not lose
our minds. All the material things, we can findthem again.”
Incomplete aid
Yet faith and spirituality are not on the agenda of most local
or international aid agencies. Unfortunately, even the religious
organizations that offer help often misinterpret or fail to
fulfill the religious needs of the people. I heard of one
group of Buddhist monks who refused to perform a ritual people
asked for because the monks didn’t think it was important.
Another monk from Burma told people, “This suffering
is a result of your karma.” One Christian white man
walked out of a displaced camp saying, "Oh, my God,
they do not believe in God.”
This is the dilemma. Some international and local aid agencies
have purely secular agendas, providing only material resources.
Some religious groups bring with them interpretations that
undermine the people who need help, or worse, try to convert
them by alienating them from their spiritual roots.
Better solutions
How should progressive religious people approach this dilemma?
First, we must remind ourselves that suffering people are
not necessarily poor and weak. On the contrary,many people
who are not materially wealthy are spiritually strong and
wise. They know their problems and how best to solve them.
They need us to listen with respect to their stories, support
their choices, and treat them equally.
We must respect victims’ faith and belief systems. We
cannot get stuck with our own expectations that lead us to
try to move others to where we want them to be.
When donating material resources, we must ask an aid organization
how it works with people in a way that empowers them, physically,mentally,
and spiritually, not weakens people’s spirit and strength.
Whenever possible, we should support local groups who emphasize
spiritual practice in their programs.
Lastly, we must challenge our own local religious institution
about its intentions and methodologies when providing support
to people.
Top (Table of Contents)
U.N.
population projections: Dire news for the planet
The news is not good.Here are some highlights from
a report released by the U.N. Population Division in February
of this year.
- The world's population will grow 40% to 9.1 billion by
2050.What's worse than the number is where the growth
will take place: Virtually all the increase will occur
in the world's 50 poorest countries.
- The population of developed countries will remain mostly
unchanged, roughly 1.2 billion.While this population
will age, immigration will stabilize these numbers.
- The U. S., the major focus of international migrants,
will receive 1.1 million annually. The country's population
will grow to 394 million in 2050, up from 298 million
in 2005.
- However, in the least self-sufficient countries of the
world, those that are already challenged with caring
for their inhabitants, the population is projected to
burgeon, from its current 5.3 billion to 7.8 billion
in 2050.
- Median fertility is projected to fall from today's 2.6
children per woman to slightly more than 2 children per
woman in 2050.
- India's population will overtake China's in the coming
decades. India's current fertility rate is 3 children
per woman. China's is estimated at 1.7 children per woman.
- Between 2005 and 2050, eight countries will account for
half the increase in the world's population: India, Pakistan,
Nigeria, Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, U.S., Ethiopia, and
China.
- The decline in births in several sub-Saharan African and
South Asian countries was slower than expected.
Top (Table of Contents)
India
removes proposed family planning incentive for its leadership
Last November, the Indian government decided to
withdraw the constitutional amendment that proposed a small-family
requirement for elected representatives.
The proposal would have prohibited anyone with a family of
more than two children from being elected to either the House
of Parliament of the legislative assemblies and councils in
the states. The movement to drop the amendment was based on
the government belief that family planning should be voluntary
rather than mandatory.
According to U.N. Division of Population, India’s population
will exceed China’s in the coming decades. India’s
current fertility rate is 3 children per woman. China’s
is estimated at 1.7 children per woman.
Top (Table of Contents)
Terri
Schiavo and Catholic Moral Theology
Dan Maguire was busy in the press and on TV, commenting
on the prolonged dying of Terri Schiavo. In an interview with
the Los Angeles Times (March 20, A 24), he criticized Vatican
hard-liners for their “fetishism of life signs, whereby
any sign of life is used as justification for postponing death.
They are putting tremendous stress on the physical life signs
rather than survival of the personality.” Death is
a process, not a moment, and her dying has been delayed fifteen
years, he said. 80% of her brain was gone and the other 20%
was radically compromised; with a flat EEG, her death was
already well advanced.
Dan told the L.A. Times that Vatican theology, which he
distinguishes from Catholic theology, is boxing the Vatican
into “a very interesting conundrum.” Pope John Paul
II departed from the wisdom of his predecessor, Pope Pius
XII, who held that no extraordinary means — including
nutrition and hydration — should be used to keep the
life signs going when there is no hope of a return to normal
functioning. As a result,Maguire said, “you could
have a totally incompetent pope for an indefinite period.”
In that case,Maguire has said in other interviews, the Vatican
would suddenly rediscover
the wisdom of Pope Pius XII and traditional Catholic theology,
and they would “pull the plug.” In fact, when Pope
John Paul II was experiencing severe breathing problems in
his final days, he was not given respirator relief nor was
he sent to a hospital.
Against his better judgment, Dan Maguire accepted an invitation
to be interviewed on Fox’s On the Record. Gretta
Von Sustern in her introduction kept referring to him as “a
former priest,” not as a theologian.When Dan got
to speak— and he was cut off very quickly—he said
that he was indeed a former priest and that he was also a
former high school student, but that he was not appearing
as such, but as “a Catholic theologian, trained in
a pontifical university in Rome and teaching on a Catholic
faculty at Marquette
University.”
In this and in other interviews, Dan remarked that the press
usually interviews priests or bishops who are not theologians
but play one on television. Thus the press is regularly getting
misinformation on true Catholic teaching from those who could
not pass a graduate exam in theology but happen to be priests
or bishops. Gretta then immediately, with much deference,
brought on a priest who was not a theologian to refute Dan.
Dan told the unwelcoming Fox interviewer that this macabre
Schiavo spectacle signaled an inability of the dominant American
cultures to accept that death is as natural as birth. Mrs.
Schiavo should have been allowed to die fifteen years ago,
he said, as soon as they discovered that her brain had already
deteriorated drastically.
In other interviews, Dan called ours a “cryonic culture,”
referring to the freeze-away-for-a-better-day approach to
dying…i.e. freeze the body in hopes for a technical fix
at some future time.He has also said that the so-called “pro-life”
mourners who wanted Schiavo’s heart and lungs kept
going after her cerebrum had died have no tears for the 26
murders of prisoners by U.S. forces or for the more than 100,000
civilians killed in Iraq. Pro-life has become a shallow motto
shielding the hypocrisies of right-wing militarism, Maguire
said.
Top (Table of Contents)
Understanding
pro-choice values
An excerpt from an address, Defining “Moral Values”
for the Next Four Years, was presented to the National Press
Club by Participating Scholar Lloyd Steffen, November 9, 2004.
Consider the 2004 Republican Platform advocating a “Human
Life”Amendment to the Constitution. That proposal makes
no provision to protect a woman’s right to choose, even
in those restrictive cases of rape, incest, or to save a woman’s
life. The Platform plan invokes the language of “innocent
life”without ever explaining what that means.
“Innocence” here refers to a religious idea of life
described as “sacrosanct,” that is, innocent in
the sense of being untainted, pure, undefiled, even “sin-less.”
The fetus is metaphysically innocent — without sin —
and who else is sinless? For Christians, the only others to
fit that category would be the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, with some others adding Mary,Mother of God. So
this attribute of divinity is being ascribed to every fetus.
If reporters could get politicians to explain what they mean
by such seemingly innocent terms as “innocence,”
the religious nature of the abortion debate and the religious
nature of beliefs about fetal status would become much clearer,
and courts would have a much easier time seeing this issue
as the advancing of a religiously grounded theory of life,
a religious viewpoint, that ought not be endorsed by government
fiat or rationalization.
Top (Table of Contents)
Book
Reviews
A Portable Egypt, Catherine Madsen (Xlibris,
2002)
An eye-opener of a novel whose incisive moral intelligence
and wicked sense of humor transform the terms of the abortion
debate. As Dara Horn (author of In The Image) has said, “A
Portable Egypt is that rare, almost unheard-of creature: a
‘political’ novel that treats a divisive issue not
as a chasm that runs between people but as one that runs within
them.”
Catherine Madsen’s unusual novel suggests that wherever
we place ourselves in relation to the abortion issue, we are
all deeply conservative, we are all deeply liberal: whichever
position we take, we are likely to contradict it in our lives
at some critical point.
Madsen, a contributing editor to the inter-religious journal,
Cross Currents, describesherself as a wildcat theologian.
She writes an elegant sentence, an arresting argument, and
a plot whose acceleration barely allows the reader to sleep.
Her characters present personalities and viewpoints you will
never see represented in the news. This is the novel that
religious pro-choice readers have been waiting for.
“The art inspired by God’s laughter does not by
nature serve ideological certitudes, it contradicts them.
Like Penelope, it undoes each night the tapestry that the
theologians, philosophers, and learned men have woven the
day before.”
—Milan Kundera
Hinduism and Human Rights A Conceptual Approach,
Participating Scholar Arvind Sharma, Oxford University Press.
This book makes a germinal contribution to the rather sparse
discourse relating to the place of human rights in Hinduism.
The author is a trained and talented philosopher, well grounded
in classical Indian jurisprudence, and raises many a pertinent
issue concerning the relations between Hinduism and human
rights. Lawpersons, social theorists, philosophers, and comparativists
will all find here some fresh starts as well as new provocations.
—Upendra Baxi, Professor of Law,University
ofWarwick
Top (Table of Contents)
Movers
& Shakers … Activites of our Participating Scholars
Movers and Shakers --
Books
Mary E.Hunt is the editor of A Guide
For
Women In Religion:Making Your Way From A
TO Z (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
Grace Jantzen: Foundations of Violence:
Volume I of Death and the Displacement of Beauty, 2004
Routledge. Volume II: Godly Killing: Violence in Western
Religions, forthcoming in 2006. For William James and
the
Varieties of Postmodern Religious Experience in Jeremy
Carrette, ed., William James and the Varieties of
Religious Experience, London and New York; Routledge,
2005; pp. 97-105.
Catherine Keller’s forthcoming book, God &
Power:
counter-apocalyptic journeys (Fortress Press),
explores
theological options in a time of empire; co-edited Postcolonial
Theologies with Mayra Rivera and Michael Nausner.
Anantanand Rambachan has contributed
chapters/articles to four recent publications:
• To Recognize and Love God in All, in Amanda
Hughes
ed., Five Voices Five Faiths (Cambridge: Cowley
Publications, 2005).
• Global Hinduism: The Hindu Diaspora, in Robin
Rinehart ed., Contemporary Hinduism (Santa
Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2004).
• The Path People Take, From All Sides, Are Mine,
Union
Seminary Quarterly Review, vol. 56:3-4, 147-156.
• Hinduism, Hindutva and the Contest for the Meaning
of
Hindu Identity, Swami Vivekananda and V.D. Savarkar,
in Sukalyan Sengupta and Makarand Paranjape, The
Cyclonic Swami:Vivekananda in the West (Delhi:
Samvad India Foundation, 2005).
Rosemary Ruether has had two books published:
Integrating Ecofeminism, Globalization and World
Religions (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) and Goddesses
and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History,
(University of California, Berkeley) coming in May, 2005.
Sa’diyya Shaikh’s recent publications include
—
• A’isha in the Encyclopedia of Islam
and the Muslim
World, ed. by R.C.Martin. New York:Macmillan.
• Transforming Feminisms: Islam,Women and Gender
Justice in Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender
and
Pluralism ed. by O. Safi. (Oxford: Oneworld Publications).
Movers and Shakers --
Honors
Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Associate
Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department
of Religion, Dartmouth College, will receive an
honorary doctorate this spring from Colorado
College.
David Loy has been appointed the next
Besl Professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio,
beginning January 2006.
Rosemary Ruether will conclude her term as the
Carpenter Professor of Feminist Theology at the Graduate
Theological Union in Berkeley, California, this June. She
will continue at the Graduate Theological Union as well as
teach one class a semester at the Graduate School and
Theological School in Claremont as a research professor,
starting Fall 2005.
Movers and Shakers --
Events
Liora Gubkin helped produce the hugely successful
What Men Owe to Women program at California
State
College, Bakersfield, on February 16th. Liora also participated
in the March 2005 International Conference on Judaism
and Domestic Violence. Participating Scholar Mutombo
Nkulu-N’Sengha and Dan Maguire also spoke at this event.
Christine Gudorf delivered the Earl Lecture at Pacific
School of Religion in January 2005, Sex and the City of
God.
Mary E.Hunt gave the 55th annual Aquinas Lecture
at Manhattan College on Same-Sex Love and American
Catholicism: Eradicating the Sin of Heterosexism.
Grace Jantzen spoke at the Lund, Sweden, Conference
on Creative Theology, September 2004 and the Second
Christian Conference on Gender,Religion and the Body,
in
Helsinki, Finland,March, 2005. Grace will speak at
Woodbrooke Weekend on Religion, Gender and Violence
(Birmingham, UK) this May.
Catherine Keller is currently helping to organize a
Drew
Transdisciplinary Theological Symposium for Sept. 28-30,
2005, Ground for Hope: Faith, Justice and the Earth.
David Loy presented the annual Thulin Lecture
at the
University of Illinois on The Religion of the Market
on April 5.
James Martin-Schramm gave the keynote speech,
Constructive Engagement: The United Nations Population
Fund in China, delivered at the 2005 Roe v.Wade Dinner
co-sponsored by the United Nations Association of San
Diego and the Coalition for Reproductive Choice,
January 20, 2005.
Veena Oldenburg has been busy with various projects:
• One of three professors to participate in a three-part
documentary on India produced by the History
Channel and Arts & Entertainment.
• Featured speaker at the University of Colorado,
Denver for Women’s History Month.
• Participated in a briefing on India at the Committee
on Foreign Relations at Tampa, Florida.
• Acted as commentator at the Woodrow Wilson
Seminar in Washington D.C.:“New Dreams/Old Cities:
The Presence of the Past in India and the United States."
Tavivat Puntarigvivat is Secretary General of the
Outstanding Women in Buddhism Award Committee:
Tavivat’s group hosted an awards ceremony at the United
Nations in Bangkok, on 7 March 2005, the United Nations
International Women’s Day. Buddhist women from around
the world were recognized for their extraordinary religious
and social work in alleviating violence and poverty among
women and girls — especially in South and Southeast Asia.
John Raines participated in the Conference on Terror
and Democracy, hosted by a group of 55 former heads of
state, called The Club of Madrid. The group formed after
the March 11th, 2004 Madrid train bombings killed 192 and
injured 2,000. The conference convened to address issues of
safety and terrorism.More than 800 participants from all
over the world attended the conference. John was part of a
panel entitled:Women, Terror, Religion and Democracy.
Laurie Zoloth provided expert testimony on Stem
Cell Research at the Texas State Legislature, Austin,
Texas in
January 2005. She has been a guest on NPR’s Speaking
of
Faith, March 6, 2005; Embryonic Stem Cell Research,
Total
Living Television Network’s Newsmakers, February 23,
2005;
Science and Religion, NPR’s Science Friday, January
21,2005.
Movers and Shakers --
Papers & Articles
Ann-Marie Hsiung Hsien-kuan:
Compliance and Resistance—the Struggle of
Singaporean Chinese Women, at the International
Conference on the Inspection and Prospect of
Asian Women organized by Beijing University
and Hong Kong Chuhai Universities, December 2004.
Marjorie Muecke: in Culture Health and Sexuality:
Shifting sexuality among lowland Thai women (6:3:183-188)
and Female sexuality in Thai discourses about maechii (lay
nuns) (6:3:221-238).
Mutombo Nkulu-N’Sengha: two articles on African
philosophy and African epistemology in the Encyclopedia
of
Black Studies (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2005).
Tavivat Puntarigvivat: 19th World Congress of the
International Association of the History of Religion,
23-30 March 2005, The Clash of Civilizations: A Buddhist
Perspective on the topic of “Religion: Conflicts and
Peace,”
in Tokyo.
Sa’diyya Shaikh: Knowledge,Women and Gender in
the Hadith, in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations,
15
(1):99-108.
Suwanna Satha-Anand: Fluid Boundaries,
Institutional Segregation and Sexual Tolerance in Thai
Buddhism at the Plenary Session of Boundaries and
Segregation at the 19th World Congress of the International
Association for the History of Religions in Tokyo, Japan,
March 24-30, 2005.
Critically
acclaimed documentary, available on VHS and DVD
A small number of healthcare professionals in this
country have become targets in a deadly conflict. They receive
little public support for their work and face dedicated and
unpredictable opponents. Their ranks are shrinking. On Hostile
Ground enters the lives of three abortion providers to reveal
the obstacles — practical, legal, and emotional —
that they face everyday, and shows them struggle with the
decision to perform this procedure.
Top (Table of Contents)
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