Rap Sheet
Links on R&P from around the web
Fox News Reporter Hired as Vatican Media Adviser
posted on June 26, 2012In the wake of secret documents being leaked, the Vatican “has hired the Fox News correspondent in Rome as a senior communications adviser,” Rachel Donadio reports for The New York Times. Greg Burke, Fox News’ Vatican correspondent since 2001, will “leave the network to help improve and coordinate the Vatican’s various communications operations,” according to himself and the Vatican spokesman. Donadio comments, “Mr. Burke is a member of the conservative Opus Dei movement, and his hiring underscores the group’s role in the Vatican.”
A Cruel and Unusual Record
posted on June 26, 2012In The New York Times, former President Jimmy Carter, a devout evangelical, criticizes the U.S. because the “country can no longer speak with moral authority” on issues of human rights. Citing the use of drone attacks in the Middle East and Guantanamo Bay’s 169 prisoners, he writes that the U.S. is “abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.” He appeals to the public, writing, “[W]e must persuade Washington to reverse course and regain moral leadership according to international human rights norms that we had officially adopted as our own and cherished throughout the years.”
Why Women Still Can’t Have It All
posted on June 26, 2012In her widely read and much-discussed article in The Atlantic, Princeton professor and former Obama administration official Anne-Marie Slaughter reflects on struggling to balance raising teenage boys with her demanding career. Religion makes an appearance in her essay, when she cites the example of White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew, an Orthodox Jew, who does not work on the Sabbath. She writes:
Everyone who knew him, including me, admired his commitment to his faith and his ability to carve out the time for it, even with an enormously demanding job.
It is hard to imagine, however, that we would have the same response if a mother told us she was blocking out mid-Friday afternoon through the end of the day on Saturday, every week, to spend time with her children. I suspect this would be seen as unprofessional, an imposition of unnecessary costs on co-workers. In fact, of course, one of the great values of the Sabbath—whether Jewish or Christian—is precisely that it carves out a family oasis, with rituals and a mandatory setting-aside of work.
Immigration Divides Romney And His Church
posted on June 26, 2012BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins writes that Romney’s views on immigration are at odds with an increasingly pro-immigration LDS Church. The church recently endorsed “a legislative resolution that discouraged deporting otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants.” Coppins notes that “during the primaries, Romney blasted illegal immigrants.” However, in a speech last Thursday at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), “Romney dialed down the rhetoric … promising to ‘reallocate green cards to those seeking to keep their families under one roof,’” Coppins writes. “But many of his Mormon skeptics remain unconvinced.”
Gay, Black, and Quaker: History Catches Up with Bayard Rustin
posted on June 26, 2012At Religion Dispatches, Stephen Angell and Leigh Eason profile the life of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. An openly gay African American and a Quaker, Rustin worked with and advised Martin Luther King, Jr., and was a vocal leader in the LGBT community. According to Angell and Eason, his advocacy for non-violence and civil rights was shaped by his Quaker faith. “But Rustin has long been denied his proper place,” they write, “largely because he was an openly gay man.”
Morsi Victory in Eygpt Is a Potent Weapon for Islamists
posted on June 25, 2012At The New York Times, David Kirkpatrick calls Muhammad Morsi’s victory in the Egyptian presidential elections “an ambiguous milestone in Egypt’s promised transition to democracy.” On Sunday, Egypt’s military rulers announced that Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, beat Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister, former Gen. Ahmed Shafik, in the country’s first competitive presidential election. “But Mr. Morsi’s recognition as president,” writes Kirkpatrick, “does little to resolve the larger standoff between the generals and the Brotherhood over the institutions of government and the future constitution.”
Guilty Verdict in Philadelphia a First in Sex Abuse Cases
posted on June 25, 2012At The National Catholic Reporter, Brian Roewe reports on the guilty verdict of Monseigneur William J. Lynn on one charge of sexual endangerment, “making him the first U.S. church official convicted for the handling of abuse claims.” It took a Philadelphia jury 13 days to find Lynn guilty “of helping to cover up priest sex abuse during his tenure as secretary of clergy for the Philadelphia archdiocese from 1992 to 2004,” writes Roewe.
Read at National Catholic Reporter
Israel Police May Have Been Ill-prepared ahead of Violent Protest
posted on June 25, 2012Haaretz’s Yaniv Kubovich and Asaf Shtull-Trauging report on this weekend’s violent protests in Tel Aviv. The protestors, who initially gathered in support of the city’s lesbian, gay and transgender community, and to demonstrate against the arrests of other social activists earlier in the weekend, “clashed with police, smashed bank windows, and blocked roads.” Kubovich and Shtull-Trauging write that Tel Aviv police acknowledged that they “failed to correctly anticipate the number of protesters that would attend and the violent behavior that would ensue.”
A Good Week for the Southern Baptists
posted on June 25, 2012Commonweal‘s Luke Hill writes about the recent news coming out of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), America’s largest Protestant denomination. In the same week that the Rev. Fred Luter was elected the denomination’s first African-American president, SBC’s Richard Land joined other leading evangelicals in calling for comprehensive immigration reform. “For Commonweal Catholics,” writes Hill, “all of this is cause for celebration not, I would submit, because each of these actions can be seen as ‘liberal’ within the confines of American politics (though they can be), but because each one is a sign of the Holy Spirit moving among our Southern Baptist brothers and sisters, helping them to grow beyond the prejudices and assumptions they inherited.”
Barack Obama: Evangelical-in-Chief?
posted on June 25, 2012Judd Birdsall argues that President Obama may be “our evangelical-in-chief.” Writing for Christianity Today, Birdsall acknowledges that this assertion will come as a surprise to the 24 percent of American evangelicals who “believe Obama is a Muslim.” But to support his claim, Birdsall quotes John C. Danforth Center national board member, and Obama’s “closest spiritual mentor,” Joel Hunter, who leads the 15,000-member Northland Church in Florida. “‘There is simply no question about it: Barack Obama is a born again man who has trusted in Jesus Christ with his whole heart.'”