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1. Unarmed Turkish Christian hijacks jet, seeks pope
Favorite headline of the day? "Pope safe despite hijack." Of course, Pope Benedict XVI was never in danger yesterday as 28-year-old Hakan Ekinci hijacked a Turkish Airlines flight bound from Tirana, Albania, to Istanbul, and directed it to land in Brindisi, Italy. But Ekinci did say he had a message for the pope.

The message he wanted to give Benedict XVI may have been the same message he sent in an August letter, asking the pope to intervene in his efforts to avoid military service. "I am a Christian, and I never want to serve in a Muslim army," Ekinci had written, according to Turkey's Anatolia news service.

Ekinci was a relatively new convert, Brindisi prosecutor Giuseppe Giannuzzi told reporters. "Having taken up the Christian religion, he feared going back to Turkey," he said. Now Ekinci is seeking asylum in Italy, Giannuzzi said.

Ekinci was reportedly unarmed, but he told the pilot that accomplices on another plane would "blow that plane up" if he didn't get his message to the pope. When the plane landed, Turkish passenger Ergun Erkoseoglu told the Associated Press that Ekinci "walked through the middle of the business class and said, 'I apologize to all of you. … Good night."

2. When was God taken out of Amish schools?
There's a mini-furor over Tuesday night's CBS Evening News broadcast remarks by Brian Rohrbough, who lost his son in the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. "Since that day, I've tried to answer the question, Why did this happen?" he said. "This country is in a moral free-fall. For over two generations, the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum, expelling God from the school and from the government, replacing him with evolution, where the strong kill the weak, without moral consequences, and life has no inherent value."

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz noted the segment today, as well CBS and Katie Couric's efforts to distance themselves from the remarks. CBS's ombudsman defended airing the remarks as "exactly the type of commentary in general that makes me want to see the segment continue and thrive. But there is a very legitimate criticism of this particular episode, an issue of relevance. Because both recent school shootings involved an outside adult and not students, whether or not our educational system is creating a moral vacuum seemed out of place and creates confusion about just what the immediate issue is."

Actually, there's a much bigger issue of relevance than that. Rohrbough's comments specifically referenced the shooting at the Amish school (though he did mention "last week's school murders" as well). It's hard to argue that Charles Roberts's violence was a symptom of secularism when his own suicide note declares anger at God. When he called his wife, she was leading a prayer meeting. Rohrbough is right to point out that the shooting is an example of "moral free-fall," but it's not their problem. It's ours.

3. The Foley cycle
New religion angle on the Foley story: He says he was abused by a clergyman. David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, says he should say who it was. "If these events happened when he was a teenager, there is a distinct possibility—maybe even a certainty—this person is still alive," Clohessy told The Miami Herald.

"To throw that out there like that, I think it's despicable," former priest Bill Brooks, who was Foley's guidance counselor in 1969 and 1970, told The Palm Beach Post. "If there's somebody out there, name him."

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October (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50