A rabbi, an imam and a Catholic priest have written a book about the “painful verses” in scriptures that offend other faiths. Instead of plucking quotes out of each others’ holy books, however, they went to their own texts and picked out the passages they found difficult themselves. The result, recently published in France in the book Les Versets douloureux (The Painful Verses), amounts to an interfaith dialogue that goes straight for some of the most sensitive topics between different faiths.

The trio — Rabbi David Meyer, Imam Sohaib Bencheikh and Rev. Yves Simoens — thought it was a needed switch from the polite interfaith meetings they were used to attending.

Here’s a feature I wrote today after their book presentation this morning. Meyer said there were no plans yet to translate it but their publisher Editions Lessius was in contact with counterparts in Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain.

The World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace, a group Meyer and Bencheikh are active in, has posted a short summary of the book in English.

The June issue of “Harper’s Magazine” has a provocative essay by Garret Keizer called “Turning Away From Jesus: Gay rights and the war for the Episcopal Church.”

The split in the global Anglican Communion over the consecration of the openly gay U.S. Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson and the broader issue of the church’s take on sexual orientation and other social issues in general has been extensively reported on.

These fault lines are partly but far from exclusively geographical, dividing more traditional churches in the developing world — especially Africa — from those in the developed world. It threatens to undermine Anglican provinces like the Episcopal Church in the United States by creating competing authorities within them, one for a more liberal majority and another for a conservative minority.

Dissecting the jargon of the conflict, Keizer sees parallels between the corporate world and the shifting currents of globalization. “What is ‘provincial realignment,’ at bottom, if not the ecclesiastical version of a corporate merger? What is ‘alternative oversight,’ if not church talk for a hostile takeover?,” he writes, seeing these comparisons in the methods rather than the motives of those involved.

He also chimes in on a theme that has been raised in different ways elsewhere by others in dicussions of America’s Religious Right: “How does a Christian population implicated in militarism, usury, sweatshop labor and environmental rape find a way to sleep at night? Apparently, by making a very big deal out of not sleeping with Gene Robinson.”

Keizer is an Episcopalian, former priest and contributing editor to Harper’s.

The Anglican split will be back in the headlines in coming weeks as Gene Robinson marries his partner, conservative Anglicans meet in Amman and Jerusalem and the Anglican Communion — minus some conservatives led by Akinola — convenes for its once-every-ten-years Lambeth Conference. What do you think the Anglican Communion will look like after this rocky patch passes?

Given the discussion about the new Latin prayer to be read at Catholic Good Friday services in the Tridentine rite today, I’ve tried to find estimates for how many people will actually hear it. Jewish groups have expressed dismay that the new version of the prayer, which drops references to the “blindness” of the Jews but still calls for their conversion. The leader of Germany’s Jewish community said she could not fathom how the German-born Pope Benedict could “impose such phrases on his church.” The Vatican rejects this criticism and sources there say it could soon issue a conciliatory note. So there’s a lot of talk about this issue, but how much is actually happening on the ground?

Actually, the vast majority of Catholics attending Good Friday services around the world will not hear this prayer in Latin but a different one in their own native language. That prayer is based on a 1970 text without any explicit reference to the conversion of the Jews. There is no official number for how many will attend the Latin services in the older Tridentine rite that Pope Benedict promoted with a ruling last year authorising wider use of the old Latin Mass. But even ardent supporters of the traditional rite agree that the number is very, very small. Some have objected to our use of the term “tiny minority” for it, saying this was dismissive and implied the number was insignificant. It wasn’t, but it’s very hard to write about such a small amount without seeming to write it off.

Looking for anecdotal evidence, I first turned to the excellent conservative Catholic blog What Does The Prayer Really Say? (which just swept the 2008 Catholic Blog Awards). This was a logical step since its lively moderator, Fr. John Zuhlsdorf (”Fr. Z”), had just taken us to task for writing “tiny minority.” I posted a question about how to describe the size of this group and several readers chimed in, suggesting words like “rare” (sounds like an endangered species), “relatively few in number” (too vague), “some” or “a few” (even more vague) or “small but growing minority” (that adds movement, but it’s still vague). Even the most neutral synonyms for “tiny” — diminutive, microscopic, miniature, minuscule, slight or wee (for my Scottish colleagues) — can be read as dismissive. How would Fr. Z put it — paupera lingua angliae?

One reader estimated there would be about 40 traditional Latin Good Friday services in the whole United States, compared to about 20,000 overall. There would be about 60 in France, the real centre of the Catholic traditionalist movement, he estimated.

I then turned to my colleague Nicolas Senèze from the French Catholic daily La Croix who has just published “La crise intégriste - Vingt ans après le schisme de Mgr Lefebvre” (The Fundamentalist Crisis — 20 Years after the Schism of Archbishop Lefebvre). He was not sure about Good Friday but said there were 124 parishes in France that celebrated the Tridentine Mass on the basis of the 1984 indult. Only about a dozen have been added to that total since Benedict’s motu proprio last year encouraging wider use of the old Latin Mass. “Based on the current rhythm of celebrations being organised, one can estimate the number of churches (in France) using the John XXIII missal should stabilise around 200,” he wrote in his book.

These are still exceedingly small numbers in the 1.3-billion-strong Catholic world. Fr. Z and several of his readers say they are rising, and I’m sure that’s true, but the rate is very gradual. We have also heard many bishops and priests saying there is little or no interest in the traditional Mass in their dioceses. We’ve been criticised on some blogs for reporting this, often by indignant readers who insist the traditional Latin Mass is so much more beautiful and prayerful than the usual vernacular services. That may very well be the case, but that is an internal Catholic matter. For the time being, we have to look at the overall numbers. This doesn’t mean we think that’s the end of the story. If this number rises steadily, we’ll revisit the issue at some point. But this is where it stands now.

Several traditional Mass enthusiasts have contacted us to point out that many young Catholics attend these services and ask why we haven’t written about this. Actually, we have written about it, back in 2005 when we first noticed this. If this continues to grow, watch this space. In the meantime, Happy Easter to all Christians, no matter which language they pray in this Sunday.

Priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Belleville, Illinois are staging a rare rebellion — demanding that their bishop, Edward Braxton, resign because of a lack of “collaborative and consultative leadership” since his installation in June, 2005.

“Because of the bishop’s lack of cooperation, consultation, accountability and transparency, it is the judgment of a great number of the presbyterate that he has lost his moral authority to lead and govern our diocese,” 46 priests — representing about 60 percent of those regularly assigned to parish work in the diocese — said in a statement issued on March 12. He should resign, they added, “for his own good, for the good of the diocese and for the good of the presbyterate.”

The priests said the problems they’ve had with their bishop were only exacerbated by a revelation earlier this year that he had used restricted funds to buy conference room furniture, vestments and other items for use in the diocesan cathedral.

Braxton issued a public apology for that in January, saying it was a misunderstanding and that he had replenished the funds from private donations. At the time he said there had been “confusion, mistrust misunderstanding, loss of confidence and even anger” and he promised a serious effort going forward on issues involving the stewardship of diocesan resources.

The priests are not the bishop’s only critics. In February, 2008, the U.S. regional superior of a women’s religious order called the Adorers of the Blood of Christ told the U.S. papal nuncio, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, that there was “grave distress among people in the diocese.”

Sister Jan Renz — whose order has a center in the diocese — said in her letter: “The climate of secrecy that surrounds committee meetings and actions within the diocese must end. Outside skilled facilitation appears absolutely necessary if there is to be a movement toward healing,” according to a report published in the Belleville News-Democrat newspaper.

“This is highly, highly unusual,” remarked Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit who once edited that order’s magazine America and is now a senior fellow at the Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center. He told Reuters that in general there has been a feeling that bishops appointed before the papacy of the late John Paul II were closer to their priests than those who came later. He also said he does not buy the idea that the newer bishops act more like chief financial officers than pastors of a flock. They have to be both, he said, or face the financial ruin of what’s been entrusted to them.

Another priest and long-time observer of U.S. Catholicism, who asked not to be quoted by name, said that while tensions between priests and bishops have increased in recent years, the Belleville situation mostly involves the personality of the bishop involved.

Braxton, whose diocese covers 128 parishes in southern Illinois, has not publicly responded to the call for his resignation.

Looks like a story our Dublin office filed back in November wasn’t just an Irish joke.

Catholic priests in Ireland complained last year that tougher laws on drinking and driving meant they would easily go over the limit just by saying mass a few times in one day. Priests in rural areas often drive to several villages every Sunday to say mass, during which drinking a small quantity of wine is an essential part of the ritual.

Bloggers naturally had a field day with this one. “Eucharist could mean ‘water into fine‘,” one wrote. “No more ‘one for the road‘ for Irish priests,” said another. A third asked if drinking was part of a priest’s job description. “Only here in Ireland and only with the Roman Catholic Church could such a story arise,” one concluded.

Well, apparently not…

Our Budapest bureau reports that “Hungary’s Catholic Church has asked the country’s justice minister to exempt its priests from a new regulation which severely punishes drink-driving. Under a ‘zero tolerance’ rule which took effect this month, police can confiscate a driver’s license on the spot if the breathalyser shows any trace of alcohol.

The church plans to issue special cards for its priests to show that they consume alcohol in the fulfilment of official duties.”

Here’s our video report from Hungary:

The Order of Preachers, better known as the Dominicans, is warning its Dutch province against sliding into schism by pressing its proposal to allow lay Catholics to say mass if they have no priest available to do so. The Dutch Dominicans have proposed that because the worsening priest shortage means many congregations there don’t have anyone to celebrate the eucharist.

The Dutch Dominicans caused an uproar last autumn when they mailed a booklet called “Church and Ministry” (”Kerk en Ambt“) to parishes across the Netherlands without informing the country’s bishops beforehand. In it, they said a congregation should be allowed to appoint any devout Catholic as a lay minister — “Whether they be men or women, homosexual or heterosexual, married or unmarried is irrelevant” — and did not need the local bishop’s approval. The bishops promptly denounced the booklet and the order’s Rome headquarters distanced itself from it.

Now, the order has produced its own report (here in French under “lire le rapport“). It is — not surprisingly — highly critical of the radical proposals. It says they “risk not only worsening the polarisation within the Dutch Church but also encouraging schism.” The author of the report, French Dominican Father Hervé Legrand, said the Dutch must know “the concrete results of the ordination of a gay bishop in the Episcopal Church in the United States: nationally, the creation of new schismatic and competing dioceses, internationally, the split in the Anglican Communion.” Any congregation acting on these proposals would “dissolve into a sect,” he wrote.

The Dutch Dominicans have pledged to translate Legrand’s report from French into Dutch and distribute it to all the Dutch parishes that received a copy of “Church and Ministry.” They see this as part of a debate they want to continue. They stress the lay-led mass would be an exception, only when no priest is available, and that they do not want to create a schism. But they want to discuss the worsening shortage of priests.

Interestingly, Legrand commends them for discussing the priest shortage and says the Church might one day reconsider celibacy. But this could only be done by the whole Church, he said. Pope Benedict is firmly opposed to any such change.

Legrand’s report mostly refutes theological points brought up in “Church and Ministry” (which he said was so full of holes “that no Catholic theology faculty in the world would support it”). I don’t have the time to translate it and don’t know if an English version is planned, but at least being in French makes it more accessable than Dutch. Several weeks passed before Kerk en Ambt was translated into English last year, which caused some confusion as readers turned to dodgy computer translations to try to figure out Dutch articles on it. One blogger made a rough translation of a press release — not the full booklet itself — and then confidently declared that an accurate report on Kerk en Ambt was flawed! So much for computer translations…

We work with the original documents and try to link to them, regardless of the language, so you can go right to the source.

Father Adolfo Nicolas, the new superior general of the Jesuit order of Catholic priests, possesses, besides decades of experience, a good sense of humour. At his first meeting with reporters since his election on Jan 19, the 71-year-old Spaniard spoke about his life, his formation in Asia and what he had been reading about himself in the media.

“I’ve read that I am 50 percent Kolvenbach and 50 percent Arrupe,” he said, referring to his two immediate predecessors, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach and Pedro Arrupe. “However, no one has yet said I’m 10 percent Elvis Presley, although one could say this and it wouldn’t surprise me. But I think this is all false.”

After the laughter died down, the soft-spoken Spaniard became a bit serious: “I am not Kolvenbach and I am not Arrupe. I am made for the reality in which I find myself.”

Even religious media have had a hard time defining him after his election to lead the Roman Catholic Church’s largest clerical order. “I am an unknown,” said Nicolas, who has spent much of his life in Asia. “So this has been like a treasure hunt (for the media). ”

Jesuit superiors general are known as “black popes” because, like the pontiff, they wield worldwide influence and usually keep their position for life — and their simple cassock is black, in contrast to the pope’s white.

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He dismissed media reports that there was a “theological gap” between himself and the Pope. “That is not true,” he said, calling him “a great professor” whose work he had studied while in Japan. “Theology is a dialogue …sometimes there are differences.”

Nicolas spoke much about how Asia had taught him tolerance. “The way of seeing faith in Asia is totally different from the way we see it here. Asia changed me, I hope for the best … Asia can do much to enrich the universal Church.”

“In Japan, I discovered that true religiosity is much deeper, that you must go to the heart of the person, the heart of the question when we speak of God, just as when we speak of ourselves or of human life. This taught me to smile in the face of things that in Spain would have upset me. But human life is like this, people are like this. Imperfection is so natural that one must accept it and not look for people who are perfect … It scandalises the Japanese that we are so strict, intolerant, so unaccepting of diversity.”

Then, at the end of the meeting, his sense of humour returned. He said one of the most interesting places in Asia is the Philippines and noted some similarities between the Filipino and Italian characters. “Like Italians, the Filipinos see traffic laws not as laws but as suggestions.”

When journalists write about churches in decline, we usually cite facts such as falling attendance and dwindling vocations to illustrate the trend. On a recent trip to the remote southern island of Ikitsuki to visit descendants of Japan’s Kakure Kirishitan (Hidden Christians), a Reuters team discovered a surprising new indicator with a fascinating story behind it. Apart from suffering from dwindling numbers, some congregations in this unique branch of Christianity no longer know how to baptise new members.

The secrecy and suspicion of outsiders that helped the Kakure Kirishitan preserve their rituals and traditions through centuries of suppression have also contributed to the loss of those rites. Their story is explained in my feature and the video below.

Yasutaka Toriyama, 68, the gobanyaku or head of a household that traditionally holds a group’s relics such as scrolls or medals, told us the rite of baptism had been lost to his own small group because the elder who conducted it died without passing on his knowledge.

Chatting over sake after completing the Christmas Eve prayers, Toriyama said years ago he had gone to the sazukeyaku — the elder who performs baptisms — of another group on the island and asked to be allowed to observe a baptism.

But he was turned away as an outsider.

“The words have been written down, but I don’t know the actions to go with them,” said Toriyama, whose own baptismal name is “Domingos”.

Younger islanders apparently have little interest in undergoing what scholars say was long a central rite of the religion, in part because baptism could be conducted without a priest. Another reason could be that the concept of purification resonated with the tenets of Japan’s indigenous Shinto religion.

Shigeo Nakazono, an enthologist who runs the island’s small museum on the island and has studied the Hidden Christians, says the last baptism was conducted on the island 12 years ago. The boy who received the rite is now about 21.

The fading away of baptism doesn’t seem to worry the Kakure Kirishitan very much. Knowing the traditional orasho chants and belonging to a group that possesses sacred relics are also important indicators of belonging to the faith. They take the idea of belonging very seriously, as the Reuters team — myself, television producer Olivier Fabre and photographer Kiyoshi Ota — discovered when we visited the Christmas Eve service. Entering the room, Toriyama performed some chants and rituals before speaking to us. “Sorry,” he explained — he had to placate the gods first for bringing “heretics” into the church.

Confused about a Christmas Eve service in mid-December? The Kakure Kirishitan celebrate Christmas before the winter solstice, not after.

Pope Benedict made an interesting comment at the consistory installing 23 new cardinals on Saturday. He warned against “careerism” in the Church and noted that the disciples James and John who asked Jesus to give them seats to the right and left of him in Heaven (Mark 10:37) had “a crude conception of merit.” Here’s his sermon (in Italian). Now, I don’t want to get into a game of “spot the careerist at the Vatican” — others do that well enough — and I don’t want to cast any doubts about the new cardinals or any Vatican officials. But reading through the biographies of the new cardinals, I had a kind of sociological interest in seeing if any single factor stood out in their pasts.

And yes, one did.

About three-quarters of the new cardinals studied at one or more of the pontifical universities in Rome. There are a dozen of these Catholic universities here specialised in theology, canon law, scripture and philosophy, with students from around the world. They used to teach in Latin, but gave that up in 1967. Most of the students are bright young seminarians sent over to Rome because their superiors spotted their potential. Others are ordained priests doing graduate work, again often sent by bishops with an eye for talent. While they’re here, they not only study, they see how the Vatican works, make contacts among professors, Vatican officials and other students and they learn Italian, an advantage for any cleric on his way up the career ladder.

The numbers said a lot. Of the Europeans who got the red hat, 7 had studied in Rome and 5 had not. That’s not so surprising, since Catholic universities in Spain or France or Belgium can provide just as good an education (if not better, some say). But among the non-Europeans, there was no contest. Ten had a Roman degree and only one didn’t.

So clerics should not be careerists … but one who wants to start his career the right way might be advised to do it in Rome.

Italians have a wonderful phrase they use when things don’t work out as they had hoped: “It was better when it was worse.”

That was the thrust of controversial comments about the Catholic Church’s relations with Israel by Archbishop Pietro Sambi, currently the Vatican’s nuncio (ambassador) to the United States and formerly the papal envoy to the Jewish state.

Sambi, who was nuncio in Israel from 1998-2005, could not have been clearer about his discontent: “If I must be frank, relations between the Catholic Church and the state of Israel were better when there were no diplomatic relations.” That was the opening salvo in a long interview in Italian with www. terrasanta.net, an on-line publication of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land.

After decades of work, Israel and the Vatican reached a fundamental accord in 1993 and established full diplomatic relations, the next year. But even when the long-awaited historic ties were forged, complex legal and financial issues about the status of the Catholic Church and its properties in Israel were left hanging on a promise and a prayer to sort them out as soon as possible afterwards.

Sambi indicated that the Vatican should have looked harder before it leaped: “The Holy See decided to establish diplomatic relations with Israel as an act of trust, leaving to promises the commitments to later on regularise concrete aspects of the life of the Catholic communities and the Church (in Israel).“

Juridical questions were ironed out in a 1997 agreement but work on financial and tax questions as well as issues of visas for foreign priests are still dragging on.

In words that were unusually blunt for a diplomat, Sambi said: “You can’t buy trust at the marketplace, it has to be consolidated with respect for accords that have been signed and fidelity to to one’s word.” In another section of the interview he lamented postponements of meetings by the Israeli delegation, the delegation’s lack of power to negotiate and what he called an absence of political will in Israel.

The whopper was perhaps this one: “The kind of trust one can place in Israel’s promises is there for everyone to see!“

Perhaps Sambi was so unguarded in venting his frustrations because the interview was given to what is a rather internal publication of the Franciscans. Perhaps he never expected it to spill over into the mainstream media.

But it was noticed.

The Israeli ambassador to the Vatican, Oded Ben-Hur, told Catholic News Service he was surprised by the comments, “especially coming from our good friend, Archbishop Sambi.“

The Vatican put out a statement (here in Italian ) saying Sambi’s words reflected his “thought and personal experience” and that the Holy See hoped for a “rapid conclusion to the important negotiations already in progress.” While some saw this as the Vatican distancing itself from Sambi, a more careful reading would perhaps be that the Vatican fully supported and appreciated what Sambi had said and done. After all, few Vatican diplomats have more personal experience in relations with Israel than Sambi.

The delegations are next due to meet December 12-13. Diplomats here are wondering whether Sambi spoke so bluntly on purpose, to push things forward. Do you think relations will be helped or hindered by these comments?