A new poll by the Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life suggests that concern about federal funding for abortion is very low on the list of factors driving opposition to President Barack Obama's effort to overhaul America's healthcare system.

The results of the poll, released on Thursday, show that just 3 percent of healthcare opponents cited abortion funding as their main reason for opposing congressional healthcare proposals.

The biggest reasons, cited by 27 percent of respondents to an open-ended question about their opposition, were that the overhaul would be too expensive and lead to higher deficits and taxes. Another 27 percent said they did not want government involvement in healthcare.

The nationwide poll of more than 1,000 Americans was conducted from Nov. 12 to 15.

The poll's publication comes as the U.S. Senate prepares to begin debate on its version of a healthcare bill that does not include language approved earlier this month by the House that would strengthen the existing prohibition on using federal funds for abortion.

Many analysts say the abortion issue -- which has been fanned by conservative evangelicals associated with the Republican Party and Catholic clergy whose flock lean to the Democratic Party -- threatens to unravel Obama's top domestic priority.

But the Pew poll highlights its apparently minor role in stirring opposition to the healthcare push which aims, among other things, to expand coverage to tens of millions of Americans who lack health insurance.

Has this hornet's nest been opened by a vocal but very small minority of the U.S. public, which would appear to have more pressing concerns when it comes to healthcare?

Photo credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (Anti-abortion activist wears mirrored sunglasses and a piece of tape over his mouth in Washington, June 1, 2009)

French President Nicolas Sarkozy took time out from a busy schedule on Friday to welcome 18 Catholic cardinals, archbishops and bishops from across Europe into the Elysée Palace for a short talk about laïcité. The prelates were in Paris for an annual session of the Council of European Episcopal Conferences (CCEE), a Swiss-based body that brings together all those bishops’ conferences. Among the topics at the three-day conference are relations between church and state in Europe, so it was natural that they’d take the opportunity to learn more about France’s trademark secular system.

(Photo: Zagreb Archbishop Josip Bozanic (L), Esztergom-Budapest Cardinal Péter Erdö (C) and Bordeaux Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard arrive to meet President Sarkozy, 2 Oct 2009/Charles Platiau)

Cardinal Péter Erdö of Esztergom-Budapest, current CCEE president, came out full of praise for the president’s presentation. It was “maqnifique”, he told waiting journalists in French. “We’re very pleased to hear the president’s point of view”, which he described as “a constructive way of interpreting laïcité”. Erdö recalled that France’s legal separation of church and state, imposed forcibly in 1905, had led to “great conflicts” in the past. “But today, I think it is one form of constructive collaboration and mutual respect” in Europe. He added that the bishops gave Sarkozy a copy of Pope Benedict’s encyclical “Caritas in veritate” (Charity in Truth) signed by the pontiff himself.

Outside of France, laïcité is sometimes seen as a hostile system the Catholic Church must be instinctively allergic to. It can give rise to some hostility, especially from officials who are actually what has to be called laïcité fundamentalists. And it can complicate life not only for the Catholic Church but all religious groups there. But in fact, most religious groups here have learned to live with the system and defend it to visiting foreigners who expect to hear them groaning about it.

An Italian professor who conducted a study of church-state relations across the region for the CCEE reported that “religious freedom is assured everywhere, with one serious exception — Turkey”. The Vatican accepts that church-state relations will be different from country to country, depending on their histories, and there is no single model — such as the traditional concordat — that it considers to be better than others. “These relations are better right now in secular France than in Spain, which has a concordat,” Professor Giorgio Feliciani of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart  in Milan told journalists.

(Photo: President Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni chat with Paris Cardinal André Vingt-Trois after the funeral of the popular French nun Sister Emmanuelle, 22 Oct 2008/Benoit Tessier)

French Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, who’s the Bordeaux archbishop and CCEE vice-president, said Sarkozy focused on his frequently expressed view that religions — not just the traditional Catholicism here, but all faiths present in France — played an important social role. Recounting the president’s presentation, he said: “He developed the point that we’ve heard him express before, namely that religions deal with the meaning of life, with the search for living together peacefully and seeking the common good, and act as a possible source of hope. We live in a society and in a Europe that needs that. The role of the state is not to give meaning to life, but to organise life. The meaning of life comes not only from religions, but from other schools of thought as well. Everyone develops his own convictions. But in this domain, religions have their place and their role to play.”

We only got excerpts of the report about the state of church-state relations across Europe, so it’s hard to say much about it (we’ll post a link if it finally turns up on the CCEE website). There was one interesting section a handout concerning the way Church declarations on “socially important matters” are received in different countries. Note the different phrases (highlighted below) used to describe the different approaches:

CONSILIUM CONFERENTIARUM EPISCOPORUM EUROPAE CCEE

“From all the responses, one can deduce that such interventions from the Church are appreciated or at least valued, as in Germany, France, Lithuania, but also in Albania and Greece. On the other hand, in other states they receive no attention (Bosnia and Slovenia), or, and especially when they are contrary to the predominant way of thinking, they cause outright hostility, as highlighted by some Austrian and Czech bishops, and sometimes they are also ridiculed by the mass media, as the Swiss bishops report. However the bishops of England and Wales, Moldavia, Poland, and Portugal, rightly report that there is a need for a distinction. In fact, while statements about sexuality, the family, bio-ethics, when they are not completely ignored, give rise to negative reactions, those concerning social problems such as human rights, solidarity, and development are appreciated and valued. It even happens that, when they are completely opposed to the former statements, considering them an unforgiveable intrusion, they would like to see greater commitment on the part of the Church in the latter. Through direct knowledge, this is the situation in Italy. In any case it should be borne in mind that publicly taking a stance along with other churches, or also with Jewish and Muslim communities and with people of no religious conviction, is better received.”

What a patchwork! Are we talking about the same Church here? Or just different European countries?

That last line also caught my eye — “Publicly taking a stance along with other churches, or also with Jewish and Muslim communities and with people of no religious conviction, is better received.” That’s an interesting message for interfaith dialogue all over Europe.

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When Americans go to the polls for the congressional elections in 2010, in some places they may also be asked to vote on state ”personhood” amendments that would effectively define life as starting at fertilization or the “start of biological development.”

A proposal like this was rejected by voters in Colorado in November but anti-abortion rights activists hope to get similar ballot measures together in at least a dozen states for 2010.

This could have broader political implications as initiatives in the past on so-called hot button social issues such as gay marriage have brought conservative Christians — an influential voting block in the out-of-power Republican Party — to the polls.

One of the groups involved is the “American Life League” or ALL, a socially conservative Catholic organization that had a booth on Saturday on the sidelines of a summit of self-styled “values voters” in Washington.

Among other things, ALL would like to see an amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which won’t happen any time soon) “to establish that legal personhood is granted to all human beings in the United States from the beginning of their biological development.”

Communications director Katie Walker said,  “It is a very simple concept that is fulfilling the civil rights movement.”

 In Florida, activists have launched a campaign to collect the 676,811 signatures they say are required to bring the proposed “personhood” amendment to a vote. Walker said there were plans to get similar initiatives rolling in several other states such as Montana and Colorado.

This is one to keep an eye on.

In the latest — but most likely not final — round in an incredible case of Italian journalistic pugilism, the editor of a Catholic newspaper sparring publicly for a week with the daily owned by the family of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has resigned.  Dino Boffo’s resignation as head of Avvenire, the daily of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, ended an Italian telenovela that had riveted the media for seven consecutive days and even saw indirect involvement by Pope Benedict.

(Photo: Il Giornale fronts charges against Boffo, 3 Sept 2009/Stefano Rellandini)

In his three-and-a half page letter of resignation (here in Italian), which he said was irrevocable, Boffo  said the tussle with the editor Vittorio Feltri of the Milan daily Il Giornale had made his life unbearable. For his good, that of his family and that of the Church, he could not longer stay “at the centre of a storm of gigantic proportions that has invaded newspapers, television, radio, the internet and shows no signs of ending.”

Boffo said his only mistake was not taking his initial judicial problem seriously enough. As noted in my blog post here last Tuesday, Il Giornale editor Vittorio Feltri wrote last week that Boffo accepted a plea bargain in 2002 over a case in which a woman accused him of harassment. Il Giornale claimed that Boffo was having a homosexual relationship with her husband. It said Boffo should not have written editorials criticising Berlusconi’s sexual escapades when he was not exactly an an innocent altar boy himself.

But in his resignation letter, Boffo said “the sexual scandal initially used against me was a colossal, fictional set-up which was diabolically engineered.” Boffo says the woman was harassed by someone else using his cell phone. “The Church has better things to do than strenuously defend one person, even if unfairly targeted,” he stated in his resignation letter.

What’s interesting is that Il Giornale, which is owned by Berlusconi’s brother Paolo and regularly attacks Berlusconi opponents as if it were an official party organ, kept up its attack on Boffo — often with front-page banner headlines — for seven consecutive days. This despite the fact that the entire Church hierarchy closed ranks to support him and Berlusconi “disassociated” himself from his own family paper. The support for Boffo included an indirect intervention by the pope in the form of a letter of support to Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, who as president of the Italian Bishops Conference is ultimately Boffo’s boss.

(Photo: Cardinal Bagnasco and PM Berlusconi, 3 Sept 2009/Max Rossi)

On the surface, Boffo’s resignation could appear to be a defeat for the Italian Church. But most likely it will be the Church which has the last laugh.

Like any Italian government head, Berlusconi needs the enormously powerful Church – whose influence spreads like tentacles throughout the country — more than the Church needs the government. An antagonistic relationship with the Church has never helped any Italian government. Even a Socialist-turned Fascist like Benito Mussolini knew he had to keep peace with the Church. It was Mussolini who approved the so-called Lateran Pacts in 1929 that set up Vatican City as a sovereign state after the papacy lost its vast land holdings in Italian unification in the 19th century. And in 1984, it was not a Christian Democrat but a Socialist — Bettino Craxi – who signed a concordat between the Vatican and Italy updating those Lateran Pacts.

The wound in Church-State relations caused by Feltri’s attack on Boffo was very deep. The Vatican took it as a slap in the face, and the Vatican famously has a very long memory. Notwithstanding the smiles between Church and government officials at diplomatic receptions and on national holidays, it will probably take many months of work to repair the damage.

(Photo: St. Peter’s Basilica, 3 Nov 2008/Tom Heneghan)

The chill left by the Feltri-Boffo war will probably not go away for some time. Eventually, it won’t be much of a surprise if the Church seeks a quid pro quo with the government in exchange for a warming in relations. This could come in the form of Church demands for a greater say in future legislation, such laws on bioethical issues or homosexual rights.

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Much of the Roman Catholic commentary on the passing this week of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy — who was a practicing Catholic — has applauded his record on civil rights, immigration reform and economic justice but deplored his support for abortion rights. Kennedy died on Tuesday at the age of 77.

(PHOTO: A photo of Senator Edward M. Kennedy sits at the entrance to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston. REUTERS/Adam Hunger)

The Catholic News Agency for example ran a report saying “Ted Kennedy leaves mixed Catholic legacy,” noting clerical discomfort with his support for the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that granted U.S. women a constitutional right to an abortion and related issues.

“As a Catholic, though he worked hard for the poor, he was criticized by bishops and pro-life leaders for supporting Roe v. Wade, the use of fetal tissue in experiments and for voting against a ban on partial-birth abortion,” the report said.

The line from the Vatican was very much in this vein. In its article about Kennedy’s death, the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano praised him for his battles in favor of immigrant rights, gun control and higher minimum wages, but regretted his “unfortunate” support of abortion.

Catholics United, a progressive Catholic organization that supports liberal economic causes and is mobilizing support for President Barack Obama’s healthcare drive, praised Kennedy’s battles on the healthcare and poverty fronts, saying: “Senator Kennedy’s legendary advocacy for justice and the common good – on issues such as health care, immigration, community service, and poverty – spanned more than four decades and touched millions.”

The American Catholic has put together a compilation of reaction from around the Catholic world that you can see here. 

Trolling through there you can find one blogger who said: “Senator Kennedy made the protection of abortion his business. So, will the Catholic Church scandalize its faithful by the pretense that Kennedy was a “Catholic in good standing” and honor him with a funeral Mass?” That blog named several mobsters who had been denied Catholic funeral masses because of their unsavory lives.

U.S. Catholic politicians who support abortion rights, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Joe Biden, often face scrutiny and criticism from some of their fellow Catholics. But their commitment to liberal economic and related causes often gels with Catholic social thinking — a point underscored by much of the praise that has come Kennedy’s way this week, even from those within the faith’s fold who took strong exception to his support for abortion rights.

Opposition to abortion rights has brought conservative Catholics and evangelicals together in recent decades, often under the roof of the Republican Party. But the reaction to Kennedy’s death suggests that there may be some limits in the long run to this political alliance.

By Mica Rosenberg

TEGUCIGALPA - A month after a coup that has plunged Honduras into its worst political crisis in decades, the country's de facto rulers declared Tuesday an official Day of Prayer for peace.  

State television has been playing announcements for days with the slogan "Let us all pray for our Honduras."

Facing international condemnation of a June 28 coup that has led to a freeze on multinational lending and threats of wider sanctions, Honduras, one of the poorest countries in Latin America, needs all the help it can get.

"We ask God to save Honduras for us. We pray to God for all who are suffering in this crisis, and we pray to God to punish the wicked," a priest saying Mass at the main Catholic cathedral in Tegucigalpa said.

He did not say who he thought should be punished but the leaders of the Catholic Church have criticized exiled President Manuel Zelaya and backed the interim government, headed by Roberto Micheletti.

But at least one of his congregation was praying for the return of the ousted president, a cowboy-hat wearing logging magnate known as Mel, who was toppled after allying himself with the socialist president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. 

"Mel is a good Catholic," said Ana Josefa Lopez. "Just now I was praying, saying 'God, open the way for Mel.' If he doesn't come back, we will not have peace."   

On June 28, soldiers seized Zelaya from his home and flew him out of the country. The Supreme Court had ordered his arrest and Congress backed his removal, appointing Micheletti as interim president within hours. Read our latest story on the crisis here.

Zelaya is in exile in Nicaragua and Micheletti's government has rejected almost unanimous international calls for him to be reinstated, vowing to arrest him if he returns to Honduras. 

Around 70 percent of Hondurans are Catholic and 30 percent Evangelical Christian, according to an official at the presidential palace. 

The official said the day of prayer was the initiative of Evangelical church leaders and it was backed by the presidency.  Catholic priest Carlo Magno also appeared on a state channel urging Hondurans to pray for peace.

Religion is a powerful force in this traditionally conservative Central American country, and the Catholic Church has no qualms about getting involved in politics. 

Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, believed to have been on a short list of possible papal candidates after Pope John Paul II died in 2005, has justified Zelaya's ouster while opposing his expulsion from the country. 

"He doesn't have any authority, moral or legal," the Cardinal told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo earlier this month.

"The legal authority he lost because he broke laws and the moral authority he lost with a discourse full of lies. The most patriotic thing he could do is stay away."

Here's another Reuters blog on the cardinal and a story by my colleague Daniel Trotta.

Zelaya moved to the left after his election in 2005 and allied himself with Venezuela's Chavez, a fierce critic of the United States and of the Cardinal.

Marcia Ines Hernandez, who works in the Church of Guadalupe in Tegucigalpa, said with the crisis looking so intractable, "it's a good idea to be inviting people to pray." 

"Many people are against the Cardinal, and Evangelical church leaders, because they say they should not get involved in politics," she said. "There's a split that's dividing the church as much as the people," she said. 

PICTURES: EDGARD GARRIDO/REUTERS - A Zelaya supporter takes pictures of fellow supporters in front of Metropolitan Cathedral during a cultural event in downtown Tegucigalpa July 12, 2009. AND: A man dresses up as Cardinal Maradiaga during a cultural event in support of Zelaya in downtown Tegucigalpa July 12, 2009, after the Cardinal asked Zelaya to stop attempting to return to Honduras.

The current struggles between religion and science in areas such as evolution and “intelligent design” are thrown into sharp relief in a new book on the great Italian astronomer Galileo and his trial by the Roman Inquisition.

Author Dan Hofstadter says the Galileo affair was “the great religion-science clash of 1633 that in some form has persisted into our time.”

Indirectly verifying Hofstadter’s thesis, a Vatican official — Monsignor Sergio Pagano, head of the Vatican’s secret archives — said earlier this month that the Roman Catholic Church should not fear scientific progress and possibly repeat the mistake it made when it condemned Galileo.

The book also explores other terrain that was certainly new for this reader, such as the link between the Baroque movement and geometrics and the moon’s association with the Virgin Mary in folklore and some strains of Catholic thought. Galileo’s study of the moon ran counter to some of these beliefs and may have stoked the anger of some of his opponents.

Read my interview here with Hofstadter, which focuses on the clash between religion and science then and now.

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Honduras’ powerful Roman Catholic Church has backed the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya, surrendering a chance to be an impartial mediator in order to counter the influence of Venezuela’s leftist president, Hugo Chavez.

Leaders of the Catholic Church, the most respected institution in the country, have backed the ouster and thrown their weight behind the interim government installed by the Honduran Congress.

Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, often mentioned as a possible future pope, has justified Zelaya’s ouster while opposing his expulsion from the country. “He doesn’t have any authority, moral or legal,” Rodriguez told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. “

“The legal authority he lost because he broke laws and the moral authority he lost with a discourse full of lies. The most patriotic thing he could do is stay away. Anything else is just trying to impose Hugo Chavez’s project at all costs.”

Read the full article here.

(Photo: Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, 12 April 2005/Alessandro Bianchi)

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Men touted as a possible next pope of the Roman Catholic Church rarely get involved in public debates over a coup d’etat or wars of words with heads of state. But that’s what Tegucigalpa Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga has done recently in the the political crisis in his country, Honduras. Before the overthrown President Manuel Zelaya made his failed attempt to return home, Rodriguez issued a statement in a televised address declaring his ouster legal and warning Zelaya could spur “a bloodbath” if he came back to Honduras.

(Photo: Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga, 16 April 2005/Kimimasa Mayama)

The July 3 televised statement, signed by the 11 bishops of Honduras, exhorted Hondurans to seek a peaceful solution to the political crisis and rejected international criticism of Zelaya’s ouster even as it condemned the manner he was kicked out of the country.

Rodriguez, one of the Latin America’s most prominent Catholic leaders, was frequently mentioned as a possible next pontiff in 2005 when he and his fellow cardinals gathered to elect a successor to Pope John Paul. There was much talk at the time that a cardinal from the developing world, where the majority of the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics live, took over at the Vatican. When the conclave opted for Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the German was called “the last European pope.” The Latin Americans could win the next conclave if they could only rally behind one candidate, the Italian media speculated. Rodriguez, then a young 62, was often mentioned as the man with the best chances.

In the meantime, Rodriguez, a former president of the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM), has taken over as president of Caritas Internationalis, the worldwide Catholic charity organisation. That gives the polyglot prelate an international profile bound to boost his name recognition among other cardinals.

Like Roberto Micheletti, who was appointed president by Honduran lawmakers after the June 28 coup, Rodriguez argued that kicking Zelaya out of office was fully backed by Honduran law. Rodriguez said Zelaya’s bid for a nationwide referendum that could have extended presidential term limits violated an article in the Honduran constitution, which states that anyone who seeks to change a prohibition on presidential reelection immediately loses any office they hold.

But Rodriguez also backed off from supporting the staging of the coup, noting that the government’s move to forcibly deport Zelaya was blatantly illegal. He went on to scold the Organization of American States for not paying closer attention to the crisis brewing in Honduras as Zelaya prepared to hold his referendum. He also took a veiled swipe Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who was building a growing alliance with Zelaya.

(Photo: Ousted President Zelaya, 6 July 2009/Luis Galdamez)

“The Honduran people ask why there has been no condemnation of the warlike threats against our country. If the inter-American system is limited to protecting democracy at the ballot box but not in fostering good government, the prevention of political, economic and social crisis, it doesn’t do any good to react tardily in the face of them,” the bishops statement said.

In an interview this week with CNN en Espanol, Rodriguez took the direct approach to addressing Chavez: “I want to take this opportunity to say that we totally reject the meddling of the Venezuelan president. We are a small country, but a sovereign one.”

Rodriguez and Chavez had traded barbs in the past after verbal attacks by the Venezuelan leader on the church in the Andean nation, as well as swipes at the Pope, with Chavez calling Rodriguez an “imperialist clown.”

Prior to the coup on June 19, Honduran bishops led by Rodriguez had issued a call for dialogue between the countries political forces, warning that upcoming elections, Zelaya’s referendum and “rumors of a coup” were dangerously polarizing the country.

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Pope Benedict issued an ambitious call to reform the way the world works on Tuesday shortly before its most powerful leaders meet at the G8 summit in Italy. His latest encyclical, entitled “Charity in Truth,” presents a long list of steps he thinks are needed to overcome the financial crisis and shift economic activity from the profit motive to a goal of solidarity of all people.

Following are some of his proposals. The italics are from the original text. Do you think they are realistic food for thought or idealistic notions with no hope of being put into practice?

• “There is urgent need of a true world political authority. .. to manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration… such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights.”
• The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly - not any ethics whatsoever, but an ethics which is people-centred…”
• “Financiers must rediscover the genuinely ethical foundation of their activity, so as not to abuse the sophisticated instruments which can serve to betray the interests of savers. Right intention, transparency, and the search for positive results are mutually compatible and must never be detached from one another.”
• “Without doubt, one of the greatest risks for businesses is that they are almost exclusively answerable to their investors, thereby limiting their social value… there is nevertheless a growing conviction that business management cannot concern itself only with the interests of the proprietors, but must also assume responsibility for all the other stakeholders who contribute to the life of the business: the workers, the clients, the suppliers of various elements of production, the community of reference… What should be avoided is a speculative use of financial resources that yields to the temptation of seeking only short-term profit, without regard for the long-term sustainability of the enterprise, its benefit to the real economy and attention to the advancement, in suitable and appropriate ways, of further economic initiatives in countries in need of development.”
• “One possible approach to development aid would be to apply effectively what is known as fiscal subsidiarity, allowing citizens to decide how to allocate a portion of the taxes they pay to the State.”

(Photo: Pope Bendict, 1 July 2009/Tony Gentile)

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