With the charge about the “party of death” still ringing in its ears, a group called Catholic Democrats has issued a Q&A on abortion setting out its case that faithful Roman Catholics can vote for Barack Obama despite his consistent pro-choice record. Catholic Democrats makes the same argument as the Matthew 25 network, i.e. that Democratic policies would actually reduce the abortion rate, which spiked under Republicans in the 1980s, fell during the Clinton administration and have leveled off — and may have begun rising again — in the Bush administration.

Former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, who is now prefect of the Vatican’s Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature, told an Italian newspaper two weeks ago that the Democrats risked becoming the “party of death” for their support for abortion rights. Other U.S. bishops have criticised two prominent Catholic Democrats — vice presidential candidate Joe Biden and House speaker Nancy Pelosi — for suggesting the Catholic Church was anything but totally against abortion.

Catholic Democrats cites the bishops’ own guidebook, “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” to stress that Catholics should not be one-issue voters and could vote for a candidate if his overall platform is morally good, despite a pro-choice plank that the Church regards as intrinsically evil. “If the only difference between two candidates is that one is pro-life and the other is pro-choice, then a pro-life voter should obviously vote for a pro-life candidate,” Catholic Democrats says. “However, elections are never so clear cut. Republican and Democratic candidates differ on many issues: healthcare, the war, the economy.”

The “Faithful Citizenship” guidelines do say that “as Catholics we are not single-issue voters” (item 42) and that “there may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position may decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons” (item 35). They also say “that all issues do not carry the same moral weight and that the moral obligation to oppose intrinsically evil acts has a special claim on our consciences and our actions. These decisions should take into account a candidate’s commitments, character, integrity, and ability to influence a given issue. In the end, this is a decision to be made by each Catholic guided by a conscience formed by Catholic moral teaching” (item 37).

Even though it leans heavily towards a “no” answer, “Faithful Citizenship” seems to leave a door open for the interpretation that Catholic Democrats and the Matthew 25 network favour. Nor do the bishops seem to have a clear view of how to end abortion.

Take a look at John Allen’s interview with Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl, who offers no simple answers: “When you get into the realm of politics, the realm of translating the need to preserve life into the circumstances of our day, what is conceptually possible and what is pressingly obligatory now begin to become two different things. That’s why there is so much confusion. I don’t think you can make things black and white, I don’t think you can separate or rule out the grays.”

Wuerl would like to see the Supreme Court’s pro-choice ruling Roe v. Wade overturned but also says: “Politically right now, existentially, if Roe v. Wade is not overturned, is there any other possible strategy that’s going to work? That’s the question with which we’ve got to grapple.”

In the avalanche of comments we got on Phil Stewart’s original “party of death” post, many readers seemed firmly convinced the Church’s position unequivocally ruled out voting for a pro-choice candidate. Is there some gray area here after all?

In the latest step in the discussion about Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust, Pope Benedict has issued a ringing defence of his wartime predecessor and said he hoped his beatification “can proceed happily.” To critics who say Pius should have spoken out publicly against the Nazi slaughter of European Jews, Benedict said Pius’s “secret and silent way” was the right approach.

“Given the real situations of that complex moment in history, he realized that only in this manner could the worst be avoided and greatest number of Jews be saved,” the German-born pontiff said at a mass commemorating the 50th anniversary of Pius’s death.

Read Phil Pullella’s full story from Vatican City here.

While this “full court press” (as John Allen of the National Cathoilc Reporter calls it) may encourage those supporting the beatification and disappoint those — including many Jewish critics — who want the process stopped, Benedict left out a crucial element both sides wanted to know more about. He made no mention of when the benediction should go ahead. An institution that is two millennia old can put off some decisions for a long time, in this case maybe long enough for World War Two to fade out of living memory. But Benedict is not one to take the easy way out, so the omission of any deadline does not mean the issue has been put off indefinitely.

In the meantime, others have joined the discussion. A U.S. Jewish group, the Anti-Defamation League, has renewed its call to open all Vatican archives on Pius. Sister Margherita Marchione, a noted Pius defender, has just presented her latest book about him in Rome.

The Sant’Egidio community, the Rome-based movement of “justice and peace” Catholic laypeople, will lead its annual silent march in memory of more than 1,000 Jews rounded up by the Nazis in Rome on October 16, 1943 and sent to Auschwitz. This round-up is part of the Pius XII controversy. Critics say the pope let it happen “under his very windows” while defenders say the deportations stopped within 24 hours because he complained to the Germans.

Financial fears and campaign-trail mud-slinging have so dominated the U.S. presidential race in recent weeks that several issues worth serious debate have mostly drifted off the public radar screen. Judging by the latest presidential debate, one of them off on the sidelines now is abortion. This has hit my radar screen, though, because some Barack Obama supporters have made what seems to be an incredible claim — that the most pro-choice candidate in the running could actually lower the overall number of abortions in the United States. Huh?

The Matthew 25 Network, which calls itself “pro-life pro-Obama,” says “an Obama administration will do more than a McCain administration for the cause of life, by drastically reducing abortions through giving women and families the support and the tools they need to choose life.”

Over at Beliefnet, editor-in-chief Steve Waldman has two very interesting posts about this. The first one says that Obama supports Medicaid funding for abortion, which obviously would make getting one easier. The Democratic candidate also supports the Freedom of Choice Act, which “would wipe out state laws, including moderate ones that merely require parental notification for teens seeking abortion.” So it looks like total abortions would rise during an Obama administration.

But Waldman’s second post points to a rarely discussed aspect of the abortion issue: “during Democratic administrations (pro-choice administrations) the average annual abortion rate is virtually identical to that under Republican administrations.” There may be something to the Matthew 25 claim, he says, “however, Barack Obama has severely undermined his ability to make such an argument.”

Waldman’s second post is long and thoughtful, so I won’t try to condense it. Read it in full.

This paradox about abortion rates first caught my attention years ago when I was covering Germany’s reunification. Communist East Germany had abortion on demand while West Germany allowed abortion with several restrictions. When he tried to harmonise all eastern and western laws in an East-West treaty in a hurry before unification in 1990, West German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (who is once again interior minister in Berlin) found to his surprise that “at least according to the statistics, the protection of unborn life is neither more nor less guaranteed in East Germany than it is in West Germany. The number of abortions per capita is about equally high in both parts of Germany.” He and his East German counterpart had to leave the abortion issue out of the treaty because they couldn’t find away to resolve it in the short time available to them. It was left to the future united German parliament to decide and it basically adopted the western law.

We had a heated debate here about a Catholic archbishop calling the Democrats the “party of death.” What do you think of this Matthew 25 claim? Can some pro-choice policies really lower the abortion rate? Or is that not the question to ask at all?

Given the faith factor in U.S. politics, it was probably inevitable that someone would come up with a poll asking who is the most Christian among the presidential and vice presidential candidates. The Times in London has done it — and come up with some interesting results so far. After an initial lead by the candidate thought to appeal most to evangelical Christians, the candidate now way out in front is the one who rumours say isn’t a Christian at all.

The online poll is open until next Wednesday, so click to Ruth Gledhill’s blog Articles of Faith to vote. The poll is a bit confusing — the post starts out asking whether Sarah Palin is a good Christian and then presents a voting table asking you to choose the “better Christian” among the presidential and vice presidential candidates. The winner of a four-horse race should be termed the “best” in the group, but maybe that sounds too judgmental.

Anyway, after voting, let us know here if you think this poll is representative of American voters’ views or skewed by votes from outside the United States.

Comedian and talk-show host Bill Maher has issued the latest “call to atheist arms” in his recently released documentary “Religulous.”

He wants his fellow non-believers and doubters to “come out of the closet” to counter what he views as religion’s dangerous influence on the world. To do so, he preaches to the converted in “Religulous”, a scathing documentary that skewers Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

The film is part of the “neo-atheist” backlash to the rising influence of religion in public life, following a path recently blazed by a trio of best-selling books by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Dawkins, a renowned Oxford biologist, has also presented a documentary critical of religion called “Root of all Evil?” on British television.

The Maher film obviously aims to entertain — the audience at the viewing I attended in a suburb north of Dallas laughed almost non-stop through the whole show and a colleague of mine in Arizona reported the same at one he attended. You can see our report here.

But Maher clearly has a political purpose in mind just weeks ahead of the Nov. 4 presidential election between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain. The latter picked conservative Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin , a staunch conservative Christian, as his running mate to energize an evangelical base which Maher regards as scary.

Maher notes that America’s religiously unaffiliated population is 16 percent, a number drawn from Pew surveys. He pointedly says this is a larger percentage of the population than several other influential lobby groups such as the National Rifle Association. Hence his call for doubters to “come out of the closet” — a call that other atheist groups and bloggers have been making in recent months.

For an example of this, see The Out Campaign.

America’s rates of religiosity are far higher than those found in most other developed countries. Some vocal non-believers believe peer and social pressure prevents others from expressing their doubt.

Maher sees this religiosity as a clear and present danger in a world bristling with nuclear and bio-chemical weapons. He doles out the blame all around, rapping the “End of Times” views of some conservative Christians but also radical Islam and militant Zionism.

What do you think? Is religion a “danger”? And will fellow non-believers heed Maher’s call and start emerging from the closet? Or is “disbelief” a difficult concept to rally around?

The Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano has lost no time in rejecting the criticism of Pope Pius XII’s Holocaust record made by Shear-Yashuv Cohen, the Haifa Chief Rabbi who addressed a synod of bishops on Tuesday. Editor-in-chief Gian Maria Vian wrote a front-page editorial today saying charges that he turned a blind eye to the Nazi massacre of European Jews was a “black legend” not backed up by history.

“He confronted the wartime tragedy like no leader of his time did. Even when faced with the monstrous persecution of the Jews [he worked] in a suffered silence which is understandable and whose aim was an efficient endeavor of charity and undeniable help,” Vian wrote in the editorial “In memoria di Pio XII” (In Memory Of Pius XII).

Vian said Pius had been unfairly accused of being insensitive to the Holocaust and even pro-Nazi. He has also been unfairly contrasted with his successor, the popular Pope John XXIII. The Church had the duty, he said, to uphold the memory of Pius XII and his service to it. Read the whole news story here.

Vian’s defence of the wartime pope came after a biographer of Pius, Vatican expert Andrea Tornielli, rapped Cohen for his “totally inappropriate” comments. Is all this a drumroll for an announcement by Pope Benedict during the mass in Pius’s memory on Thursday?

UPDATE: Rabbi Brad Hirschfield at Beliefnet is calling this mass Benedict’s “Yom Kippur Mass” because it comes just before the Jewish holy day. He also gives it an interesting  and positive theological interpretation based on Yom Kippur — “On a day which celebrates that we can stand before God and get a second chance, no matter what we have done, Catholics and Jews have the opportunity to engage in a more honest dialogue than ever before …”

If you’re a white evangelical or black Protestant attending church in America, you have probably heard a thing or two about homosexuality. If you’re Catholic, maybe not.

Those are among the findings of a new survey conducted by Public Religion Research on behalf of Faith in Public Life, a non-partisan resource center.

It found that among the white evangelicals and black Protestants surveyed, 67 percent said their pastor speaks out about the issue of homosexuality — among Catholics that number drops to 37 percent.

But Catholics at 78 percent were the most likely to hear about abortion while attending a religious service.

Hunger and poverty topped the list of what Americans from a range of Christian denominations hear in church. Among white mainline Protestants, 88 percent reported their clergy speaking about such things; among Catholics, 90 percent did.

Immigration was at the bottom of the list. Among white evangelical Protestants only 12 percent reported their pastors speaking about the issue.

The survey included a national sample of 2,000 adults including an oversample of 974 respondents aged 18 to 34. It was conducted from Aug 28 to Sept 19. The margin of error for the broader survey is +/- 2.5 percent and for the younger group it is +/- three percent.

(PHoto Credit: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton, Aug 13, 2008. A church seen from inside a Greyhound bus in Alabama)

Americans who attend church once or twice a month have become a sought after “swing vote” — and they are swinging to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in the run-up to the Nov 4. presidential election.

That is one of the key findings of a new survey conducted by Public Religion Research on behalf of Faith in Public Life, a non-partisan resource center.

It found that, based on religious service attendance, the biggest shift in candidate preferences between 2004 and 2008 was among those who went once or twice a month. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry got 49 percent of their vote in 2004 while Obama is now pulling 60 percent.

But in a reflection of the 2004 race, Obama’s Republican rival John McCain “maintains a significant advantage among voters who attend more frequently, while Obama has a nearly identical advantage over McCain among those who attend less than a few times a month or never,” the survey says.

Among those who attend religious services more than twice a week, the survey found McCain leads Obama 60 percent to 34 percent. Kerry in 2004 garnered 35 percent of that vote.

McCain also maintains a significant lead with white evangelical Protestants, a key Republican base which helped propel President George W. Bush to power. This base has been energized by McCain’s selection of staunch conservative Christian Sarah Palin as his running mate and the Arizona senator leads Obama among them by 68 to 25 percent.

Among younger white evangelicals between the ages of 18 and 34 that narrows to 65 to 29 percent — a finding in keeping with other polls on the subject. This suggests Obama has made some inroads into the evangelical political monolith though his gains have been minimal despite an extensive faith outreach program.

The survey also found that 49 percent of Americans think Obama is friendly to religion and 45 percent think McCain is friendly to religion — numbers that both candidates may find discouraging since neither chalks up a majority on that score.

The survey includes a national sample of 2,000 adults including an oversample of 974 respondents aged 18 to 34. It was conducted from Aug 28 to Sept 19, so it was obviously before the second televized presidential debate. The margin of error for the broader survey is +/- 2.5 percent and for the younger group it is +/- three percent.

(Photo Credit: REUTERS/Jim Bourg, Sept 27, 2008, USA. Combination images of the presidential candidates)

The Jewel of Medina, a novel about the Prophet Mohammad’s child bride Aisha already linked to an arson attack in London, was rushed into U.S. bookstores on Monday in a bid to head off any other violence. Author Sherry Jones says it’s a respectful account of Aisha’s life but Random House baulked at publishing it after being warned it could offend Muslims and provoke violence from a “small, radical segment”.

Publisher Eric Kampmann, president of the Beaufort Books company whose London office was firebombed, told Reuters that the surprise measure would help change the discussion about the book. “We felt that, given what was happening, it was better for everybody… to let the conversation switch from a conversation about terrorists and fearful publishers to a conversation about the merits of the book itself,” he said.

Comments from Muslims in Britain about The Jewel of Medina have been mixed, with some approving a vigorous protest and others saying their views have evolved since the Rushdie affair. Comments on blogs since the novel went out to U.S. bookshops range from those criticising it as a “flawed jewel”, those (like Ayaan Hirsi Ali) cheering the publisher for not caving in and those urging Muslims not to be provoked even by this “distorted picture of Aisha”. Some, citing a review saying it’s just a “second-rate bodice ripper-style romance”, wonder what the fuss is all about.

People who protest violently against a book usually haven’t read it and have no intention of doing so. This was the case with Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses — and has been with many other books that had nothing to do with Islam. So is Kampmann’s strategy a smart move or a naive attempt to get hotheads to read first and shout later?

A leading Italian biographer of Pope Pius XII has sharply criticised Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen for recalling the controversy about the pope’s role in the Holocaust during an unprecedented address to a synod of Roman Catholic bishops at the Vatican. Andrea Tornielli, the Vatican correspondent of the newspaper Il Giornale who has written four books defending the wartime pope, said no cardinal could have ever spoken that way at a major Jewish forum in Jerusalem.

Cohen, the chief rabbi of Haifa in Israel, was the first Jew to address such a synod. In unscripted remarks, he told the bishops that Jews “cannot forget the sad and painful fact of how many, including great religious leaders, didn’t raise their voice in the effort to save our brethren but chose to keep silent and helped secretly.” Defenders of Pius, who was pope from 1939 to 1958, say he did he did his utmost to help Jews during the Holocaust; Pope Benedict repeated this recently in his first public statement on his predecessor. But his critics fault Pius for not publicly challenging the Nazis by denouncing the Holocaust.

Tornielli focused special attention on Cohen’s statement in a Reuters interview prior to his synod speech. The 80-year old rabbi told our Vatican correspondent Phil Pullella that he might not have attended the synod if he had known in advance that Pius would be honoured there. The synod will mark the 50th anniversary of his death in 1958 with a special mass on Thursday at which Benedict may announce that Pius will soon be beatified. Tornielli wrote on his blog Sacri Palazzi (Sacred Palaces):

“Apart from the fact that the date of Pius XII’s death is not exactly a secret of the Mossad and can be found in all encyclopedias, and apart from the fact that the 50th anniversary represents an important milestone, I find it totally inappropriate that a Jewish leader invited to speak Catholic bishops uses the occasion to embarrass the Pope, and on the basis of black legends to boot. I leave to your imagination what would have happened if a cardinal of the Roman curia had been invited to speak at a major Jewish religious forum in Jerusalem and then, on his way out, had made statements of a similar tenor to journalists. Let me simply remind Rabbi Cohen of the words spoken by a distinguished colleague, the Grand Rabbi of Jerusalem Isaac Herzog, in 1944: ‘The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion which are the foundations of genuine civilization, are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters at the most tragic hour in our history. (This is) living proof of Divine Providence in this world.’ After the death of Pope Pacelli, the same Herzog declared: “The death of Pius XII is a great loss for the entire free world. Catholics are not the only ones to regret his death.”

The Pius controversy doesn’t split neatly along Catholic-Jewish lines. Only last month, the mixed Jewish-Catholic group Pave The Way from the United States visited Pope Benedict and held a conference in Rome giving a positive assessment of the pope’s record. And an American Catholic priest, Kevin Spicer, has just published a critical study entitled Hitler’s Priests.

The issue of the Catholic Church and the Third Reich is not going away anytime soon.