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• Church sacrifices thousands to help struggling | Thousands of pounds in income have been sacrificed by the Church of Scotland to help the country's beleaguered farmers (The Herald, Glasgow)

Church life:

• Rifts growing among local Presbyterians | Orlando is fast becoming the staging area for an all-out holy war pitting Presbyterian against Presbyterian (Orlando Business Journal)
  
  
• 'Obscene' masts anger parishes | An initiative by the Church of England to raise £24 million by hiring out steeples for use as mobile phone masts has provoked opposition among parishioners angered by the commercial exploitation of churches. (The Times, London)
  
  
• Also: Concern over church phone masts (BBC)
  
  
• Flocks withstand tornado | La Plata congregations unite despite battered and broken churches (The Washington Post)

Holy Land:

• America's new Christian Zionists | The Jewish lobby has long been perceived as a powerful influence on US foreign policy but Israel has found new support from American Christians (BBC)
  
  
• Give me shelter | For Palestinian gunmen, the Church of the Holy Nativity offers more than a physical refuge. Sanctuary law may be history, but it exists in spirit (The London Independent)
  
  
• Under siege, fiercely longing for peace | Palestianian Christians are tired of the Church of the Nativity standoff (The New York Times)
  
  
• Evangelicals, Jews build bridges | Israel isn't the only issue where they're working together: religious freedom, debt relief and other issues also bind them together (Samuel G. Freedman, USA Today)

Catholicism:

• Priests told to cut back on absolution for groups | The Vatican announced that it was cracking down on priests who had become too free in granting group absolution to sinners or otherwise become lax confessors (The New York Times)
  
  
• Also: Pope urges confession, bars forgiving 'habitual' sinners (Associated Press)

Clergy abuse scandal:

• Jesus' response? Don't ask Newsweek | The Newsweek article could be written off as just one more example of poor journalism, one more broadside against Christian values, if it didn't so accurately illustrate how our culture's moral values have been systematically dumbed down. (Tim Swarens, The Indianapolis Star)
  
  
• With too much to lose, Congress holds its tongue | In the halls of Congress, where lawmakers are eager to offer opinions and hold hearings on virtually any topic, the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church has generated a startlingly unusual reaction: dead silence. (The Boston Globe)
  
  
• Focus on gay priests may be a powder keg | In the midst of the Catholic Church's widening sex abuse scandal, the relative abundance of gay men in the priesthood--a fact that for years was mostly ignored—has suddenly set off a divisive debate among American Catholics. (Chicago Tribune)
  
  
• Bishops must balance civil, canon law in sex cases | America's Catholic leadership may talk of zero tolerance for sex offenders in the priesthood, but bishops have a 100% problem with shedding such men (USA Today)

Crime:

• Knifed driver prayed for attacker | Clinton Phillip killed angry passenger in self-defense, say police (New York Daily News)
  
  

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May (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46