Powell Under Fire for Advocating Different Kind of Defense Shield

White House stands by Powell’s MTV condom comment despite conservative fire “In my own judgment, condoms are the way to prevent infection and, therefore, I not only support their use, I encourage their use,” Secretary of State Colin Powell said on MTV last week. “Forget about taboos, forget about conservative ideas with respect to what you should tell young people about it. It’s the lives of young people that are put at risk by unsafe sex, and therefore, protect yourself.” The remark has conservative Christian political groups upset. “Colin Powell is the Secretary of State, not the Secretary of Health,” said radio psychologist James Dobson in a press release strongly denouncing the remarks. “He is talking about a subject he doesn’t understand. He clearly doesn’t understand the science regarding condom efficacy. … Powell is a career soldier. He knows what it means to follow the Commander-in-Chief. We have to assume he wouldn’t contradict his boss without prior approval. If that is not the case, the President needs to publicly repudiate these statements immediately.” The Family Research Council, which has strong ties to Dobson’s Focus on the Family, also criticized Powell. “Sec. Powell’s remarks are reckless and irresponsible,” said the organization’s president, Ken Connor. “They create the ‘illusion’ of safe sex, resulting in an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases in this country. President Bush should repudiate Sec. Powell’s comments and publicly exhort him for his irresponsible remarks.” So far, Bush hasn’t repudiated the comments. In fact, National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice said, “I don’t think there’s any flap here, and I certainly know that the president doesn’t feel that there is.” Press secretary Ari Fleischer also supported the comments. “The question was in the context of for people who practice sex,” Fleischer said Friday.

It was not a question about everybody in our society; it was a question of just those who are sexually active. … The President and the Secretary are shoulder to shoulder on abstinence education, as well as health education and sex education, as a way to prevent unwanted pregnancies and as a way to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. What the President has done, and Secretary Powell has long been involved in, is highlight for the first time the importance of abstinence education.

Radical Hindus attack Catholic church in southern India Police arrested nine members of the Hindu fundamentalist group Bajrang Dal for attacking a Roman Catholic church service Sunday. Christian groups also accuse the Bajrang Dal’s alleged parent organization, the Sangh Parivar (an umbrella group for several Hindu fundamentalist bodies). “The attack was a naked aggression by the Sangh Parivar,” said All India Christian Council President Joseph D. Souza. “They have learnt nothing from their so-called dialogue, some rounds of which were held in Karnataka, with some leaders of the Christian community.” Witnesses put the attacking mob at about 50 youth, who injured worshipers, broke furniture, and smashed windows while demanding to know how the priest was converting local villagers. The All-India Catholic Union says police merely looked on during the attack.

Food for the Poor in trouble again “The charity’s founder resigned amid a sex scandal, the FBI has been investigating for almost two years and the Catholic Church recently cut its support,” reports the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “Even so, Food for the Poor has grown into South Florida’s largest charity, raising more than $1 billion in its 20-year history for aid to the Caribbean.” The charity says it has cleaned up itsact, but the newspaper’s investigation “found that questions linger at Food for the Poor and that the charity has not always been open with donors who have contributed to its success.” Most of the allegations against Food for the Poor, the fourth-largest international charity in the U.S., center on how much power the founding family has over the charity and how closely it is related to the family’s for-profit business.

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Vouchers:

Anxious parents await hearing on school vouchers | Cleveland case offers high-stakes test over church and state; Justices to hear arguments (The Baltimore Sun)
Supreme Court faces stark choice in school voucher case | The Court’s decision, expected to come this summer, could mark the beginning or the end of a national school voucher program. (Fox News)
The court and school choice | Children in Cleveland, and millions elsewhere, are being disabled by the anti-choice coalition’s campaign to turn the Constitution into a barricade to prevent poor children from escaping from the public school plantation (George F. Will, The Washington Post)
Cleveland families disagree on value of school vouchers | Beyond the legal arguments lies a deep division among Cleveland parents (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland)

Other education issues:

Debate evolves over biology lessons | Next month, the Ohio School Board will be the first to consider adding to its statewide standards the “intelligent design” theory, which advocates say explains complex parts of biology that are elusive in Darwin’s evolution paradigm. (The Washington Times)
Do religion lessons violate separation of church, state? | Religious leaders asked about History Alive program (Los Angeles Times)

Politics:

Variety of faiths make views known at Capitol | Unlike some of their fellow lobbyists, however, those representing religious causes have no political action committees and no hefty expense accounts (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
GOP aims to broaden churches’ politicking | Bill would allow backing of candidates (The Washington Post)
Detention is no way to treat asylum seekers in a true state of grace | Locking refugees in camps is a poor way to start our relationship with them (Peter Jensen, The Sydney Morning Herald)
Zealous Stockwell Day crosses line | Politicians have no place in the churches of the nation (Don Martin, Calgary Herald)

Persecution:

No faith in China | While we believe political and religious freedom will inevitably follow the greater economic liberty available to Chinese citizens, this seems unlikely to occur prior to the collapse of the party dictatorship (Editorial, The National Post)
Chinese clamps down on religion | Until recently, the campaign against Christian groups was overshadowed by China’s effort to crush the Falun Gong spiritual movement. But the treatment of underground Christians is drawing increasing attention, and could be an issue when President Bush visits Beijing this week. (Associated Press)
Zimbabwe police arrest four priests | Ministers were going to pray for peace in upcoming elections (SAPA)

Missions & ministry:

Missionaries deal with primitive challenges | Being a missionary has never been easy, says recruiter Dun Gordy (The Orlando Sentinel)
AIDS crisis in spotlight | About 1,000 people, including missionaries, denominational leaders, and nonprofit and elected officials expected to attend the “Prescriptions for Hope” conference in Washington, D.C. (The News & Observer, Raleigh, North Carolina)

Church life:

Religious activity falling to pre-attack levels, say polls | U.S. economy jumped back to being the top priority of Americans, though their sense of “alienation” from people of power and wealth in the country has dropped (The Washington Times)
Cathedrals draw up plans to charge tourists | Westminster Abbey cited as model (The Independent, London)
Looking to old cathedrals for inspiration to beautify churches today | A review of Ugly As Sin: Why They Changed Our Churches from Sacred Places to Meeting Places—and How We Can Change Them Back Again by Michael S. Rose (Emily Oren, Los Angeles Times)
Black Presbyterians join statewide recognition of ex-slave-turned-pastor | Pennsylvania celebrates Henry Highland Garnet Day (The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Willow Creek to explore religions of world | Norman Geisler is main speaker (Chicago Tribune)

Abuse:

Facing a sin of the fathers | Is it something about being a Catholic priest? The headlines make it seem so. But the data is just not there to answer that question, or many of the other uncomfortable questions that arise on the subject. (The New York Times)
Celibacy doesn’t cause child abuse | The church’s pedophile problem, as I view it after years of dealing with priests sent to psychiatric treatment centers and sometimes prisons, lies not in its celibacy policy but in the way priests are educated in seminaries. (James J. Gill, The Hartford Courant)
Boston priests’ sex scandal causes ripples across U.S. | People have come forward to tell of abuses by priests in other dioceses, and some dioceses have begun releasing the names of sexual abusers that they long kept secret (The New York Times)
Church moved accused priests | Scandal reveals how molesters were transferred (Chicago Tribune)
New Hampshire diocese names 14 priests accused of abuse (The New York Times)
Priest-sex scandal expands to N.H. (Associated Press)
Governor apologizes over sex scandal | Queen Elizabeth’s representative in Australia, the Governor-General, Peter Hollingworth, is to apologise on national television for failing to help victims of child abuse. (BBC)

Catholicism:

Vatican to open some WWII-era files on Pius XII | Scholars examining the pope’s stance on the Holocaust say the disclosure could answer only two of their 47 questions (Los Angeles Times)
Also: Vatican to hold off opening Pope Pius XII wartime archives | Prewar archives will partly open next year, but documents on Pius XII’s controversial World War II pontificate won’t be available for at least three more years. (The New York Times)
Also: Vatican to release WWII papers (Associated Press)
Dispute precedes Juan Diego campaign | Skeptics claim saint-to-be was mythical figure (Houston Chronicle)

Television:

Special Doc fills its Rx | Steven Curtis Chapman guest stars in episode about show’s writer’s life (Boston Herald)
Also: Pax TV prescribes Doc for family friendly viewing (The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Donor pays off debt at Christian TV channel | An anonymous saviour has backed plans by John Fashanu, the former footballer, to create “one of the biggest” Christian television networks in Europe. (Financial Times)