(Photo: Protest against clergy sex abuse at the Catholic cathedral in Sydney, 18 July 2008/Tim Wimborne)

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Elizabeth E. Evans is an American freelance journalist living in Glenmoore, Pennsylvania who writes about religion.

By Elizabeth E. Evans

Two large scale American studies of clergy gone off the rails raise a host of troubling and baffling questions, not solely about clergy sexual misconduct, but about how and why parishioners either tolerate or ignore signals that something is wrong. One sad but perhaps inescapable conclusion from them is that it may be time to start taking a more skeptical look at those who exercise power in our congregations.

This fall, Baylor University’s School of Social Work released the results of a national study of clergy sexual misconduct with adults. Roughly three percent of adult women who attend religious services at least once a month have been the target of inappropriate sexual behavior by pastors, researchers found . That’s a startling number. But even more eye-popping were the number of congregants — eight percent — who knew about clergy sexual misconduct in their faith community.

(Photo: Diana Garland/Baylor)

The respect Americans institutions give to the separation of church and state makes misconduct seem like a private matter, Baylor Social Work School Dean Diana Garland told me in a telephone interview. But the power faith communities give to their clergy makes it a public one.

Clergy sexual misconduct doesn’t solely damage its primary victims, she commented.  It also hurts spouses, children - and congregants. In such a situation, “congregations split“ she said. “Some congregants come to the defense of leaders, assuming that the woman caused leaders to fall.”

The reason parishioners may ignore signals that a clergyperson is misbehaving cut to the heart of that relationship. “We ignore the warning signs…because we haven’t had a cognitive category to deal with it,” said Garland. “It’s not just an affair; it’s an abuse of power.”

Other factors? Parishioners tend to participate in a congregational culture of “niceness.” Communication used to be very public, but it is now a lot easier to correspond or talk in private, creating situations that can build intimacy until sexual boundaries are crossed.  Clergy don’t always have oversight from judicatory or congregational leaders.  And clergy often function in multiple roles as spiritual leader, counselor and friend.

(Photo: Protesters against Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal in Boston, 13 May 2002/Jim Bourg)

“Most pastors are not equipped to do counseling,” she said. “The role of a leader who exhorts and challenges people is very different from that of a psychotherapist who meets in a contractual way to resolve a life crisis.”

Lastly, and perhaps most tragically, congregants expect that their faith community is truly a sanctuary, a safe place in which they can let down their guard. That trust has been violated again and again. “Maybe we need to recognize the humanity of our religious leaders, taking it, as well as their calling, seriously,” said Garland.

Garland would like to see denominations adopt model ethical codes that lay leaders in congregations could adopt for their own use.  Giving parishioners language to identify misbehavior as “misconduct” rather than a consensual affair would be a step forward. Bible studies focused on the concept of power use and abuse in church and society might be helpful, the Baylor report suggests.  Researchers also suggest a way out of the church-state dilemma by proposing model legislation (which currently only exists in two states) defining sexual contact with congregants as illegal, not just immoral.

Perhaps it’s time to put aside the assumption that our religious leaders can function as role models because they are, by definition, closer to God. It is possible that, under these circumstances, the best remedy may be a very secular on, increased oversight by higher-ups and vigilance on the part of congregants.

(Photo: Cardinal Bernard Law after resigning as Boston’s Catholic archbishop amid charges of  hushing up sexual abuse of children by his priests, 16 Dec 2002/Brian Snyder)

American Catholic bishops recently got an update on an ongoing study of decades of sexual abuse of children in the Roman Catholic Church. The John Jay College of Criminal Justice study has come up with some provocative findings.   Politicsdaily.com columnist David Gibson quoted researcher Margaret Smith: “We have not found that the problem [the sexual abuse of minors] is particular to the church,” Smith told the bishops. “We have found it to be similar to the problem in society.”

Researchers also suggested that eventually efforts to impose boundaries and deal with abusive clergy paid off, which is a sign of hope in a rather bleak landscape. Bishops became more enlightened on the subject and adopted a much tougher policy. Seminarians were screened more effectively.  And parishioners and society in general became more aware of the terrible effect of sexual abuse on children.

The John Jay research also suggests that most of the offenders were not clinical pedophiles, but also exhibited a variety of other unhealthy behaviors.

Is it possible that there is something in the culture of congregations that allows such abuse to begin and to continue?  Garland and her team have provided a way to begin asking that and other questions.

(Photo: Defrocked Catholic priest Paul Shanley in Boston court, 15 Feb 2005/Charles Krupa)

In the meantime, maybe parishioners need to take off their stained-glass lenses when they step into a place of worship, holding their leaders accountable to the same standards applied in secular organizations.

There will be times, hopefully rare, when they don’t like what they see and have to figure out what they are going to do about it. But their place of worship will be a much healthier and safer place, if laypeople stop operating with blind faith that Father (or Mother, Rabbi or Imam) always knows best.

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A damning report on sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests in Dublin is due out later this week, only six months after another report on abuse in industrial and reformatory schools across the country accused priests and nuns of flogging, starving and, in some cases, raping children in their care.

“It will not be easy reading,” Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said of this new report back in May when the uproar over the first report prompted so many calls to counseling services for abuse victims that the advice centre had to close temporarily because it couldn’t handle all the inquiries.

(Photo: Copy of the first report on clergy child abuse, 20 May 2009/Cathal McNaughton)

The Sunday Independent newspaper, which broke the news, said the report will accuse the four archbishops who preceded Martin of covering up the abuse “to preserve the power and aura of the Church and to avoid giving scandal to their congregations.”

Today, the daily Irish Independent said the diocese’s compensation bill for victims of child abuse is set to double to more than 20 million euros after publication of the report, now expected on Thursday. It is due to be presented to the Irish cabinet today.

“Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has prepared both clergy and public for what we are going to hear.  This is a major  break with the old tradition of secrecy, which played a major part in getting us into this mess,” wrote the Jesuit blogger Fergus O’Donoghue, editor of Studies: an Irish Quarterly Review.  “Our bishops, however, seem to have an air of  “business as usual”.  This makes them look exactly like our bankers!  They must realise that everything has changed and that diocesan and national synods in Ireland are decades overdue.  We must be assured that secrecy, particularly in the appointment of bishops, has been abandoned and that Irish Catholicism is moving into a new  era of openness and collaboration, even if it is about thirty years too late.”

Here’s a selection of the headlines from the Irish papers:

Archbishops’ cover-up of child sex abuse revealed

Report on clerical child abuse claims in archdiocese to be published this week

Archbishops put church honour before children

Medb Ruane: The devil is in the detail of this depraved vision of hell

Paedophile priests can’t be named and shamed

Audits to reveal how dioceses dealt with child-abuse claims

Church’s bill to hit €20m after latest sex claims

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(Photo: Russian Orthodox church in Moscow, 1 July 2009/Sergei Karpukhin)

A masked gunman entered a Moscow church and murdered a Russian Orthodox priest who had received death threats for converting Muslims to Christianity and criticizing Islam, prosecutors and church officials said Friday.  The killing could threaten delicate relations between the powerful majority Russian Orthodox Church, which has close ties to the Kremlin, and the country’s growing Muslim minority of about 20 million.

The gunman approached priest Daniil Sysoyev, 34, in St Thomas Church in southern Moscow Thursday night, checked his name and then opened fire with a pistol, a spokesman for the investigating committee of the Prosecutor-General’s office said.

Sysoyev was from Tatarstan, a predominantly Muslim region of Russia on the Volga river. He was threatened after preaching to Muslims and Christians from other denominations. “I have received 10 threats via e-mail that I shall have my head cut off (if I do not stop preaching to Muslims),” Sysoyev stated on a television program in February 2008, according to Interfax. “As I see it, it is a sin not to preach to Muslims.”

“Islam is far from being a religion in the way we understand it,” he said in one of his video lectures posted on YouTube (here in Russian). “Islam can be rather compared with projects like National Socialism or the Communist party seeking to create God’s kingdom on Earth using humanly instruments,” he added.

Read the whole story here. See also Interfax Religion … RIA Novosti (with picture) …

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(Photo: Anglican Bishop of London Richard Chartres with wife and children, 5 Sept 1995/Russell Boyce. Under the Vatican offer, bishops could not be married and Anglican bishops who join the Catholic Church must give up their episcopal rank.)

Pope Benedict’s decision to fling open Catholicism’s doors to disaffected Anglicans could challenge centuries of Catholic opposition to married priests and may bring the Church closer to married priesthood.

The opening announced last week could lead to as many as half a million Anglican faithful, some 50 of their bishops and thousands of married Anglican priests converting to Catholicism.

The conservative Anglicans, who oppose female priesthood and gay bishops, now have an exit strategy. They will have their own niche within the Catholic Church and will be allowed to convert as individuals, parishes or even as whole dioceses.

They will not have to jettison their Anglican traditions and many will find their new parishes headed by formerly Anglican married priests who will become de facto married Catholic priests after they convert.

Cardinal William Levada, head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, the pope’s job until he was elected in 2005, acknowledged that the Vatican will have some serious explaining to do to groups that have been pushing for a married priesthood: “I think for some people it seems to be a problem because as you know there have been many Catholic priests who have left the priesthood to get married, and the question arises, ‘well, if these former Anglicans can be married priests, what about us?’”

Read the whole analysis here.

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Nigerian author Uwem Akpan, who is a Jesuit priest, said he was "humbled" that his debut collection of short stories was chosen by influential U.S. talk show host Oprah Winfrey for her book club.

Oprah picked "Say You're One Of Them" as her 63rd book club selection, the first time she has chosen a book of short stories, saying these stories "left me stunned and profoundly moved."

The collection, published in 2008, includes five separate stories from the perspective of an African child that were described as capturing the resilience of children growing up in the face of unimaginable devastation.

Uwem Akpan, who runs a parish in Lagos, told Entertainment Weekly that he was "very, very humbled" to be chosen by Oprah.

He said he was not currently working on another book as his parish had been so busy but the church supports his writing with no conflict of interest between writing and being a priest.

"I have permission to write, but I do not need an imprimatur from the church -- that is more for people who are writing about theology and philosophy. They see that I am writing fiction and assume it is made up," he said.

"Don't forget that Jesus was a priest and a poet."

Oprah's book club is the biggest in the world with almost two million online members and books chosen for Oprah's book club invariably  skyrocket to the top of the U.S. bestseller lists. Akpan studied philosophy and English at Creighton and Gonzaga universities then studied theology for three years at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa.

He was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 2003 and received his master's degree in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006. His story collection was first published last year by Little Brown & Co, which is part of the Hachette Book Group that is owned  by French publishing company Largardere.

Umem Akpan picture: Courtesy of Oprah.com

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Nicolas Senèze is deputy editor of the religion service at the French Catholic daily La Croix and author of La crise intégriste, a history of the SSPX. He wrote this for FaithWorld (translation by Reuters) after covering the ordinations in Ecône for La Croix.

(Photo: Bishop Fellay greets children in Ecône, in Valais canton in southwestern Switzerland, 29 June 2009/Denis Balibouse)

By Nicolas Senèze

Bishop Bernard Fellay has gone and done it. On the morning of June 29, before crowds of the faithful gathered on the large meadow outside the Saint Pius X seminary in Ecône, Switzerland, the Superior General of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (SSPX) ordained eight new priests. Just like Bishop Alfonso de Galaretta did on Friday in Zaitzkofen, Germany, and Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais 10 days ago in Winona, Minnesota in the United States. They went ahead and ordained these men despite the Vatican’s declaration that the ordinations were “illegitimate”, i.e. illegal according to the law of the Roman Catholic Church.

Was this a provocation by the SSPX against Pope Benedict, whose flag flies above the seminary? Absolutely not, a very self-confident Bishop Fellay responded to journalists who had journeyed to this Swiss Alpine village for the ceremony. “There is a tacit tolerance from Rome,” said the Swiss-born bishop, whose 20-year excommunication was lifted in January along with the three other bishops drummed out of the Church in 1988. “We did not have an explicit order not to do this. I have contacts with Rome, I’m not just making this up out of thin air. Rome knows this is not a provocation on our part.”

In any event, for Bishop Fellay, the SSPX is in the “state of necessity” which canon law mentions when it allows derogations from Church rules. “If everything went well in the Church, our gesture would have been disobedience. But all is not well in the Church,” he said calmly. “We see such scandals at Mass, we hear sermons so contrary to the faith!”

This is the same “state of necessity” that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre invoked in the 1970s and 1980s, when he went ahead with priestly ordinations without having the power to do so. At the time, the SSPX, which had been dissolved by the bishop of Fribourg with the endorsement of Pope Paul VI, had no official status in the Church. Pope John Paul had asked the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) to settle the Lefebvre case. The CDF prefect at the time was named … Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

(Photo: Candidates for SSPX priesthood in procession before their ordination in Ecône, Switzerland, 29 June 2009/Denis Balibouse)

Early this year, the same person, who became pope in 2005, lifted the excommunications pronounced after the collapse of the talks he had conducted in 1988 with Archbishop Lefebvre. Again, the case will now be entrusted to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - a sign that the differences with these fundamentalists are primarily theological. But that means there is also a red line not to cross — the fundamentalists must accept the authority of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the post-conciliar magisterium of the popes.

“The biggest problem is philosophical,” Bishop Fellay observed. “Two philosophies meet: the classical scholastic philosophy and modern philosophy. The pope is very eclectic and we feel that he has been marked by a subjective philosophy — less when he talks about morality than when he speaks in the abstract. Our scholastic philosophy is more objective.”

So Bishop Fellay thinks that Rome and Ecône may speak “about the same thing, but differently.” This is a timid opening, but it must be appreciated for what it is. Only a little while ago, the SSPX Council firmly rejected Vatican II as a council tainted by error.

In essence, Bishop Fellay is saying that the fundamental issue is less the Council itself than its interpretation. “There are differences of position within the Catholic Church that are larger and more serious than those we have with Rome,” he said. “The Council texts opened the door to interpretations. It may be necessary that the pope clarifies them, as Paul VI did on collegiality. But when the pope condemned the hermeneutic of discontinuity, he condemned 80% of what is happening in the Church!”

What’s your opinion? Is 80% of what goes on in the Catholic Church wrong?

(For readers of French, here are La Croix readers’ reactions to the ordinations)

(Click on the photo above for a slideshow on the Samaritans)

Samaritan High Priest Abdel Moin Sadaqa was relaxing on his porch watching Al-Jazeera on a wide-screen TV when we dropped by his home to talk about his ancient religion. “I like to keep up with the news,” the 83-year-old head of one of the world’s oldest and smallest religions explained as he turned down the volume. Told we wanted to make him part of the news, more precisely part of a feature on Samaritanism, he sat up, carefully put on his red priestly turban and proceeded to chat away in the fluent English he learned as a boy under the British mandate for Palestine. Our interview with him and other Samaritans were the basis for my feature “Samaritans use modern means to keep ancient faith.”

(Photo: High Priest Abdel Moin Sadaqa at his home, 19 May 2009/Tom Heneghan)

Visiting the descendants of the biblical Samaritans was the last stop in a series of visits in Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank I made after covering Pope Benedict’s trip to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Leaving Jerusalem with Ivan Karakashian from our bureau there, we drove through Israel’s imposing security barrier to Ramallah, picked up our Nablus stringer Atef Sa’ad there and then drove north along the web of priority roads that link the spreading network of Israeli settlements in the West Bank back to Israel. Signs of the Israeli-Palestinian face-off were all around — Israeli army patrols and checkpoints, guarded Jewish enclaves flying the Star of David flag on the hills and Palestinian villages with their mosques and minarets in the valleys. The tension seemed to melt away, though, when we turned onto a narrow road to wind our way up Mount Gerizim to the Samaritan village of Kiryat Luza.

The West Bank Samaritans used to live in Nablus, the nearest Palestinian city, but left it when the first intifada in 1987 brought the tension too close for comfort. The Samaritans get along with both Israelis and Palestinians and many have identity papers from both sides, Husney Kohen, one of the faith’s 12 hereditary priests, told us at the community’s small museum in Kiryat Luza. But their custom of not taking sides and keeping secrets meant that gunmen began using their neighbourhood as a place to execute enemies in broad daylight without worrying about witnesses. “We weren’t hurt, but we were afraid,” he said. Now living on their holy mountain, the Samaritans feel safe.

The museum looked like a treasure trove of ancient Judaica, but Kohen made sure to point out the differences between Samaritanism and Judaism. “We are Israelites but not Jewish … we have 7,000 differences between our Torah and the Jewish one,” he declared as he showed a copy of a Samaritan scroll he said was the oldest book in the world. The original is locked in their temple for safe keeping. The museum boasted genealogical lists dating generations back to Adam and a few paintings of biblical scenes where Samaritans play a cameo role.

Amid all the ancient artifacts, it seemed strange to hear Kohen talk about Samaritan boys meeting girls over the internet or Samaritan couples going to Israeli hospitals for pre-nuptual genetic tests. Samaritan life is governed by strict laws, especially those isolating women during menstruation and after childbirth, but Samaritan women do not keep any other kind of purdah. In fact, they stand out in Nablus — along with the few Christian women there — walking around in western clothes and flowing hair among the veiled and covered Muslims. Kohen’s oldest daughter works as a journalist for the Palestinian news agency Wafa, the second is a pharmacist and the third is studying English at the university in Nablus.

(Photo: Samaritan priest Husney Kohen with a copy of the faith’s ancient Torah in the Samaritan museum, 19 May 2009/Tom Heneghan)

Kohen caught our attention by mentioning mail-order brides and we wanted to pursue that angle, but he said several couples had been burned by intrusive questions from journalists and no longer wanted to give interviews. He mentioned that High Priest Sadaqa’s daughter-in-law was Ukrainian, but wasn’t sure we could see her. When we called on Sadaqa, though, he was more than ready to introduce Shura to us.

The problem was that she wasn’t as ready to be introduced. With her fair hair, black pants and tank top, she could have passed as a European tourist visiting the town. She reluctantly sat for a few minutes to a hail of questions, from Atef in Arabic and Sadaqa in English (for my benefit), and stammered a few shy answers in Arabic.

There was so much we wanted to ask — how did you get here? how do you like it? was it hard to convert? would you recommend this life to other foreign women? — but she suddenly ducked back into the house, saying she had to work in the kitchen. That was the end of our fleeting encounter with one of the women helping to keep Samaritanism alive. (For more on Shura, see below)

While most of Samaritanism’s outside brides have been Jews from Israel, Kohen said three were Muslims and five Christians like Shura. All of them came from far away — the Muslims from Turkey and the Christians from Russia and Ukraine. Seeking converts among the local Muslim majority or the tiny Christian minority in Nablus could strain the good relations the Samaritans have with their neighbours.

Another Samaritan priest, Khader Adel Kohen, said he didn’t want his three sons to marry foreign brides when they grew up. “It’s better to take one from the Jewish community, as long as she converts,” he said. “I have nothing against Russians and Ukrainians, but we don’t know who they are.”

(Photo: Samaritan priest Khader Adel Kohen in Nablus, 19 May 2009/Tom Heneghan)

Hearing so much about their strict rules and the struggle to keep the religion alive prompted me to ask Sadaqa if the community had any rebels. Some had left, he conceded, but very few. And are there any atheists? He waved his hand dismissively and frowned. “Thank God, there are none. This is the biggest blessing. A Samaritan would never abandon his religion voluntarily.”

So did Sadaqa, who has travelled the world and studied the scriptures of other religions, have any advice for faiths that were losing their flocks? “I know everything, I see it, but I don’t want to interfere,” he said. “I can lead my community but I haven’t the strength to lead the whole world. Those who preserve their religion, God preserves them.”

Filmmaker Efim Kuchuk and Mark Mejerson interviewed Shura and her husband for their 2007 film “New Samaritans.” Among other things, it shows Samaritans with the genetic defects from intermarriage that also worry the community. Here is a YouTube excerpt:

Can someone be Christian and Muslim at the same time? This came up over the weekend in two articles from almost opposite sides of the globe.

Rev. Ann Holmes Redding in Seattle thinks she can be both. Her Episcopal Church does not and is moving toward defrocking her if she does not renounce Islam. Redding, who has been an Episcopal priest for 25 years, first announced her dual faith over a year ago and was given 15 months to think it over. Now facing defrocking, she told Janet Tu of the Seattle Times that she is “still following Jesus in being a Muslim” and feels “privileged to see God in more places, rather than fewer places.”

Now take a Google Earth-style leap to Istanbul. There, Mustafa Akyol asked in the Turkish Daily News whether Islam required Christians and Jews to give up their traditions in order to be saved. The standard answer is yes, but Hayrettin Karaman, a professor emeritus of Islamic law, recently questioned that in the conservative Islamic daily newspaper Yeni Safak. “He noted that Islam does not necessarily ask Christians and Jews to abandon their traditions. It rather tells them to keep their traditions while respecting Islam as a sister faith,” Akyol wrote.

On the blog GetReligion, Mollie asks exactly where the doctrinal lines are. Judging from these two articles, it seems that Christians draw a clear line but Muslims may not. Is this the case? And if so, what does that mean for Christian-Muslim dialogue?

The Church of England has just issued an apology to Charles Darwin for opposing his theory of evolution when The Origin of Species first came out 150 years ago. The Roman Catholic Church says it sees no need to say “sorry” for its initial hostility to the same theory. But both are now reconciled to evolution as solid science and are getting active in presenting their view that it is not incompatible with Christian faith. Is one approach better than the other to get this message across?

Next year’s double anniversary — the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species — is one reason to speak up about evolution. Another is the fact that evolution has become an increasingly controversial public issue, especially in the United States, and the debate is dominated by mostly conservative Protestant creationists and “intelligent design” supporters on one side and agnostic/atheistic scientists on the other.

That debate is so entangled in U.S. politics — the latest chapter being the questions about Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s views on teaching creationism in schools — that a less polarised view has a hard time getting heard. Trying to walk a middle path can be a tricky business, too, as Rev Michael Reiss in Britain has learned. A biologist and Anglican priest, he has just had to resign as the Royal Society’s director of education after causing an uproar among scientists by saying creationism could be discussed as a “world view” in science class. He wasn’t advocating it, but thought that simply telling students with creationist views that they were wrong would turn them off science completely.

So what’s the best way for anyone who wants to get a word in edgewise? Apologies to a man long dead? Arguments that may not be heard? Something else?

One reason for the different approaches may be that the churches are responding to  different poles of this debate. The Church of England seems more concerned about arguments from the “new atheists” such as Oxford University’s Richard Dawkins. The Vatican seems to be thinking more about creationists and “intelligent design” supporters.

On a new website the Church of England has devoted to Darwin, Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, its director of mission and public affairs, declared that “good religion needs good science”. The CoE opposed evolution back then, he said, but it was, after all, “not such an earth-shattering idea”. He continued:

Darwin’s immense achievement was to develop a big theory which went a long way to explaining aspects of the world around us. But to treat it as an all-embracing theory of everything is to travesty Darwin’s work. The difficulty is that his theory of natural selection has been so effective within the scientific community, and so easily understood in outline by everybody, that it has been inflated into a general theory of everything – which is not only erroneous but dangerous.”

After explaining the current Anglican view, Brown added: “Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends. But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests. Good religion needs to work constructively with good science – and I dare to suggest that the opposite may be true as well.”

The Vatican started off with theology on Tuesday as it announced a conference next March on evolution with  scientists, theologians and philosophers. “I would like to repeat from the outset … that there is no incompatibility between the theory of evolution and the message of the Bible and with theology,” Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican’s culture minister, told journalists in Rome.

Asked about the Anglican apology, he said: “Maybe we should abandon the idea of issuing apologies as if history was a court eternally in session … Darwin was never condemned by the Catholic Church nor was his book ever banned … The attitude of the Anglican Church is curious and significant, the style belongs to a mentality a bit different from ours.” 

Professor Phillip Sloan of Notre Dame University, which will co-host the conference with the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, put the issue in wider context. “In the United States, and now elsewhere, we have an on-going public debate over evolution that has social, political and religious dimensions. Most of this debate has been taking place without a strong Catholic theological presence, and the discussion has suffered accordingly.”

Rev Marc Leclerc, a Jesuit philosophy professor at the Gregorian, said Darwin’s work was more often discussed ideologically than scientifically, which has led to a stand-off between what he called evolutionism and creationism. The “intelligent design” argument had added to the confusion by saying only divine planning could explain evolution, he said. That amounted to confusing divine purpose and a mechanism, “whereas these are obviously two distinct planes”.

There is speculation in Rome that Pope Benedict might receive about 400,000 (yes, 400,000) Traditional Anglican Communion members into the Roman Catholic Church this summer, after the official Anglican Communion finishes its ten-yearly Lambeth Conference on August 3. Both the Church of England Newspaper in the U.K. and the National Catholic Register in the U.S. have run stories on this. Both sides are subscribers only, so all links here are to reports about them.

According to the Church of England Newspaper, talks between the Vatican and the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) focus on the question of whether a group can enter into full communion with Rome as an independent rite, similar to the Eastern rite churches that keep their own traditions and leadership. That sounds like it means they would want to use the Book of Common Prayer, keep their married clergy and retain some autonomy of member churches.

The newspaper quotes the Episcopal Bishop of Fort Worth, Texas, the Rt Rev Jack Iker — now in Rome on study leave — that “it is thought that the Pope is sympathetic to the dilemma of traditionalists in the Anglican way.”

It noted that “no formal dialogue exists between TAC and the (Council) for Promoting Christian Unity — the Vatican agency tasked with ecumenical relations.” Catholic Online commented:“The TAC may be getting ahead of itself on how quickly such a request will be acted upon.”

This is still speculation and we have no inside track on this. But it should be noted that Benedict has shown a taste for surprising us on such issues. Remember the baptism of the Italian Muslim Magdi Allam at Easter? The Vatican dicastery following Islam reportedly knew nothing about that in advance, even though it caused a flap in Vatican-Muslim relations.

Benedict also kept his cards close to his chest when he wrote the text of the new Latin Good Friday prayer that upset Jews when it came out. Cardinal Walter Kasper, whose Pontifical Council for Christian Unity includes the office for relations with Judaism, was not informed about the exact wording until near its publication, at which point it was also a fait accompli. One would have thought he should have been told, but…

Those weren’t the only rabbits he’s pulled out of a hat. Benedict upset French bishops in 2006 by recognising the Institute of the Good Shepherd, a group of five traditionalist priests in Bordeaux who had fallen out with the schismatic SSPX group and asked to return to Rome. The pope made them answerable to him, not the local archbishop (Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, who also happened to be the head of the bishops conference at the time). Benedict let these returning priests use the old Tridentine rite that the French bishops did not want to see restored (and had not yet been boosted by the pope’s motu proprio ). All this was presented to the French bishops as a fait accompli and the official statements they made about it afterwards, when loyalty to the pope meant they had to defend the decision, were noticably lukewarm.

The TAC, which has 14 member churches around the world, has been talking with the Vatican since 1990. It asked for full communion last year. In its letter, it wrote: “We seek a communal and ecclesial way of being Anglican Catholics in communion with the Holy See, at once treasuring the full expression of catholic faith and treasuring our tradition within which we have come to this moment.”

If — repeat if — this happens, it would be quite a coup. Although the TAC is not part of the Anglican Communion, it would most probably be seen as another blow for mainstream Anglicanism. Do you think Benedict would do that to Rowan?