from India Insight:
Fashion and the church: Trousers for men only?
When in church, wear what the preacher tells you. So says the Synod Executive Committee, a decision-making body of the largest church in the north-eastern Indian state of Mizoram.
All women attending places of worship should refrain from wearing see-through dresses, clothes that expose the breasts or are too tight-fitting -- and trousers -- according to a dress code prescribed for Presbyterian Church of India members. The guidelines also say men must wear clean shoes and respectable suits.
Church attire has been a subject of discussion for years in the Christian-majority state, whose youth are influenced heavily by western fashion and hip-hop culture, and more recently the ‘Korean Wave’ phenomenon.
While some women still wear conservative dresses and traditional ‘puan’ (cloth wrapped around the waist) to church, many others attend service with short skirts and tight pants, drawing frequent condemnation from church elders and pastors who say they demean the place of worship.
Many others also complain that the poor feel left out as most use the religious service -- which also happens to be one of the biggest social gatherings in the community -- to flaunt expensive outfits.
But with most of the ire directed at women, is the dress code a simple case of propriety, or does gender come into play?
The directive against trousers for women, for instance, seems like a patriarchal diktat. Formal trousers are deemed ‘respectable’ in most workplaces, and aren’t considered too revealing. And many women, especially with infants to take care of, find it more practical as opposed to skirts or traditional ‘puan’ which are more prone to ‘wardrobe malfunction’.
Malaysia sets up Vatican ties in gesture to Christian minority
Malaysia and the Vatican agreed on Monday to establish diplomatic ties, a move seen by analysts as a bid by the Malaysian government to appease minority Christians in the mainly Muslim Southeast Asian country. Prime Minister Najib Razak is trying to mend the government’s relations with Christians who make up about 9 percent of the country’s 28 million after a rise in religious tensions ahead of general elections widely expected next year.
Religious tensions have risen in Malaysia following general elections in 2008 when the government recorded its worst performance after mainly Chinese and Indian non-Muslim minorities abandoned Najib’s ruling coalition, complaining of marginalization.
Unhappiness among the Christian minority has since been deepened by an ongoing row over the use of the word “Allah” by Christians to describe God, which led to attacks on houses of worship including several churches last year. “This will be seen as an effort towards reconciliation with Malaysia’s Christian community but will only work to ease the unhappiness of some… because some of the issues have yet to be resolved,” said James Chin, political analyst at Monash University campus in Kuala Lumpur.
Najib has tried to ease the anger by reaching out to Christian groups by providing assurances on their right to practice their religion. But some in his United Malay National Organization or UMNO, the linchpin of the ruling coalition, have cast this approach aside in a bid to woo Malay Muslims, a key vote bank who make up 55 percent of the country’s population. Malaysia’s general election is not due until mid-2013 but many expect Najib to call one as early as next year to profit from continued economic growth in the country.
For more on relations between Kuala Lumpur and its Christian minority, see these previous FaithWorld posts:
Athens debt crisis taxes cosy ties between state and Greek Orthodox Church
The Greek Orthodox Church owns more land than anyone except the state, employs thousands on the public payroll, has a stake in the nation’s biggest bank, but campaigners say its tax payments are derisory. The Church vehemently denies accusations it is one of Greece’s biggest tax dodgers and says it is playing a vital social, economic and spiritual role in this time of hardship.
With the third year of recession tormenting Greece’s 11 million people, the Church has provided solace, comfort and nourishment but activists say it’s now time to dig deep into its coffers to help with the bailout.
The Greek Orthodox Church has long enjoyed a privileged, some would say cosy, status when it comes to taxes in a country where it is responsible for the sole official religion, with one critic calling its complex finances at best opaque. But the sovereign debt crisis that has rocked the Greek state, thrown hundreds of thousands of people out of work, and forced painful cuts in salaries, pensions and benefits, has raised fresh questions about the Church’s tax position.
More than 100,000 people have joined a Greek Facebook page “Tax The Church”, and 29,000 have so far signed an online petition urging the state to harness “the huge fortune of churches” to reduce Greece’s crushing budget deficit. “The Church must pay its share of the tax burden,” said former finance minister Yannos Papantoniou. “It is totally unreasonable in this situation that they contribute so little.”
The Church angrily denies accusations it doesn’t pay its fair share. “This is a lie. We pay more land tax than ordinary businesses and we pay 20 percent of our rental income in tax,” said Father Timotheos, the Greek Church’s Holy Synod spokesman.
Despite the growing demands for more transparency, Prime Minister George Papandreou’s PASOK socialist government doesn’t dare take on the powerful Church, an adviser to the premier acknowledged, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Ireland attacks confessional secrecy after Catholic sex abuse scandal
Ireland’s prime minister has said Catholic clerics would be prosecuted if they failed to tell the authorities about crimes disclosed during confession, the latest blow to the prestige of the once-dominant Church. A report this week found that the Church concealed from the authorities the sexual abuse of children by priests as recently as 2009, and that clerics appeared to follow Church law rather than Irish guidelines to protect minors.
“The law of the land should not be stopped by a crozier or a collar,” Prime Minister Enda Kenny told journalists on Thursday, referring to the hooked staff held by Catholic bishops during religious services. Kenny said his government would submit legislation to parliament that could jail clerics for up to five years if they failed to report to authorities information about the abuse of children.
The law will override the confessional privilege in Church law that prevents clerics from sharing information, he said. A series of revelations of rape and beatings by members of religious orders and the priesthood in the past have shattered the dominant role of the Catholic Church in Ireland.
Ireland’s Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore on Thursday summoned the Pope’s representative, the papal nuncio, after the report said that the Vatican had undermined Irish guidelines on reporting sex abuse by referring to them as “study guidelines.”
“We consider it absolutely unacceptable that the Vatican intervened here in a way which had the effect of undermining the efforts to deal adequately with the issue of child sexual abuse,” Gilmore said. “We want a response from the Vatican.”
The report on the diocese of Cloyne in county Cork lists how the diocese failed to report all sexual abuse complaints to the police and did not report any complaints to the health authorities between 1996 and 2008. The bishop formerly responsible for the diocese, John Magee, who had previously served as private secretary to three popes, falsely told the authorities that he was reporting all abuse allegations to the police, the report said.
via Ireland attacks confessional privilege after scandal | Reuters.
Catholic Church should pay Dutch sexual abuse victims – commission
TheDutch bishops’ conference had sought the recommendation of an independent commission after cases surfaced involving paedophile priests in the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Germany, Australia, Canada and the United States.
Victims should be paid on a sliding scale starting at 5,000 euros, with 25,000 for victims of rape and the maximum of 100,000 euros ($142,300) for “exceptional cases of sexual abuse”, the commission concluded. Its report released on Monday said financial compensation alone was not enough, and victims should receive apologies, assistance and recognition for their suffering.
A separate commission had reported in December that 1,975 people had come forward to declare that they were victims of sexual and physical abuse while they were minors in the care of the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands.
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Vatican turns to Internet to stem sexual abuse scandals
The Roman Catholic Church, often accused of dragging its feet on sexual abuse scandals, will turn to the Internet with a new e-learning center to help safeguard children and the victims of molestation. The Vatican presented the move at a news conference on Saturday flagging an international conference on sexual abuse of children by clergy to be held next February at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University with church backing.
“The e-learning center will work with medical institutions and universities to develop a constant response to the problems of sexual abuse,” Monsignor Klaus Peter Franzl of the archdiocese of Munich. It will be posted in German, English, French, Spanish and Italian and help bishops and other church workers put into place Vatican guidelines to protect children.
“We want people to know that we are serious about this and that we think the Church has to be at the center of a solution,” said Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi. “This is not a flash in the pan initiative but something we are committed to in the long-term.”
The e-learning center will offer guidance to those who have to respond to abuse cases as well as information for victims.
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Pity the pandering U.S. candidate
Politicians pandering for votes on conservative family values issues may want to think again.
A survey of 3,000 Americans by the Public Religion Research Institute found 42 percent said the terms “pro-choice” and “pro-life” both described them well, illustrating the complexity of the abortion issue in the minds of many.
“The terms ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’ does not reflect the complexity of Americans’ views on abortion,” said Robert Jones, head of the institute.
Seven in 10 Americans say the term pro-choice describes them somewhat or very well, and nearly two-thirds say the term pro-life correctly describes them.
The survey also noted a “de-coupling” of views on the legality of abortion and of same-sex relationships among those born after 1980.
“Millennials (people aged 18 to 29 who came of age at the turn of the millennium) look about like their parents do on the legal right to an abortion. But on the issue of same-sex marriage they look significantly more supportive,” Jones said.
Overall, 56 percent of Americans support the legality of abortion – roughly the same level of support as in the past decade.
Muslims rush to restore torched Egyptian church
Mohammed Fathi worked his brush gently over an icon of Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, removing soot from its surface inside a church gutted in an attack by Islamist militants this month. “It takes a lot of careful work to do that,” Fathi said. “We have to do a lot of tests with chemicals to try to restore the icon to its original condition.”
The 26-year-old is one of a vast group of mostly Muslim craftsmen tasked with restoring St Mary’s Church in the Cairo suburb of Imbaba after militants set it on fire on May 7. Egypt’s military rulers have ordered its restoration at a time when tensions between Christians, who account for about 10 percent of Egypt’s population, and Muslims are on the rise. The ground floor of the four-storey church was gutted in the fire, destroying 10 out of 27 old icons beyond repair.
On Wednesday, a team of mostly Muslim restorers — working for one of Egypt’s biggest construction firms known as The Arab Contractors — huddled in one corner, using special chemicals, paint and brushes to rescue the remaining paintings.
“My job is to restore historic art pieces, be they Muslim, Coptic or Jewish,” Fathi said.
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China says respects religious freedom after pope laments pressure
China’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday it hoped the Vatican could acknowledge the reality of religious freedom in the country, after the pope said Beijing was putting pressure on the faithful who want to remain loyal to the Vatican.
“We hope the Vatican can squarely face the reality of religious freedom in China and the continuous development of Chinese Catholics, and take concrete actions to create conditions for developing Sino-Vatican ties,” ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regular news briefing.
China’s 8 to 12 million Catholics are divided between the state-sanctioned church that names bishops without the Vatican’s approval and an underground church wary of government ties. China forced several bishops and priests loyal to the pope to attend a meeting of the state-backed church last year, rankling the Vatican. Read the full story here.
Pope Benedict has said China’s communist authorities were putting pressure on faithful who want to remain loyal to the Vatican and he hoped the Chinese church could survive attempts to divide it from Rome. He called on Wednesday for all Catholics to pray for the faithful in China, who are not allowed to recognise the pope’s authority but forced to be members of a state-backed Church.
“We know that among our brother bishops, there are some that suffer and are under pressure,” the pope said at his weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square. “By praying we can ensure that the Church in China remains one, holy and Catholic.” Read the full story here.
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I bet the catholic bishops from china won’t be able to touch the pope, without being touched by him first. 2000 years of traditional warfare tactics, and the mind of the most philophically, and tactically familiar mind of the pope will prevail, I swear on my own name.
Report says U.S. Catholic sex abuse “historical”, critics see coverup
A church-sponsored study on Wednesday blamed poorly trained priests and a deviant society for the Roman Catholic Church’s sex abuse crisis, but victims dismissed it as a whitewash of an institutional coverup. The largest study ever done on youth sexual abuse by U.S. Catholic clergy concluded that priests were no more likely to abuse than anyone else, gay priests were not more likely than straight priests to abuse, and the priestly vow of celibacy was not directly to blame.
The study, conducted by researchers at John Jay College in New York and covering the past 50 years, also found clergy abuse cases have dropped since the 1980s.
“There’s no single cause of the sexual abuse crisis … and the problem is largely historical,” study researcher Karen Terry told reporters at a Washington news conference. “It is consistent with patterns of increased deviance in society during that time” in the 1960s and 1970s, she said, adding that rates of abuse within the Church were comparable to that of organizations like schools and clubs.
Priests unprepared for a life of celibacy turned mentoring relationships into abusive ones, she said. Poor reporting of clergy abuse cases to civil authorities and a pattern of transferring of abusive priests to other parishes by some bishops have cast a cloud over the Church.
A group that represents victims of clergy abuse said bishops continue to cover up crimes, and that shame leaves many more victims of abuse silent. “Predictably and conveniently, the bishops have funded a report that tells them precisely what they want to hear: it was all unforeseeable, long ago, wasn’t that bad and wasn’t their fault,” said David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).
Read the full story here. The full text of the report is on the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) here.
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