(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 new row has flared in the Catholic ranks of the U.S. abortion wars, this one involving a member of America’s most famous Catholic political family and a bishop.  Congressman Patrick Kennedy, the son of the late Senator Edward Kennedy, has claimed that Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin has slapped a communion ban on him for his support for abortion rights.

(PHOTO: Patrick Kennedy speaks at funeral of his father, Senator Edward Kennedy, 29 Aug 2009/Brian Snyder)

“The bishop instructed me not to take communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me communion,” the Rhode Island Democrat was quoted as saying this week in the Providence Journal.

On the pages of the same paper the bishop fired back, asserting that it was a “request,” not an instruction.  “If he took it as an instruction, so be it, but it was really a request,”  the bishop was quoted as saying.

The request was apparently made back in 2007 but the trigger for the most recent twist in the saga seems to have been Kennedy’s comments to CNSNews.com in October that the Catholic Church was fanning “the flames of dissent and discord” by insisting that healthcare reform legislation include explicit bans on funding for abortion.

Such a provision was included in the House version of the bill that narrowly passed but not in the one under consideration in the Senate. The stakes could hardly be higher as an overhaul of America’s healthcare system is President Barack Obama’s top domestic agenda.

(Photo: Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry at the Charles Street AME Church in Boston, 4 April 2004/Jim Bourg)

The whole issue has highlighted divisions in the U.S. Democratic Party, which has regained control of Congress and expanded its majorities there in the last two election cycles by widening its tent to include moderates and conservatives. Some of these new Democrats oppose abortion rights, making them an awkward fit in a party that has long supported them.

This also seems to be a never-ending dilemma for the U.S. Catholic Church and one which haunted John Kerry when he ran for president in 2004 — should it distribute communion or not to public figures who support abortion rights, given the Church’s teaching that abortion is the taking of innocent life and therefore a grave evil.

Holy Communion is a sacrament of the Catholic Church and denying it to a Catholic is a rare and serious step. Even the U.S. bishops are divided over whether to do this. Those who favor denial say the Church has to take a public stand against politicians who ignore its teachings. Those opposed to it say denial involves them in political fights that have no place at Mass.

We asked back in August if Teddy Kennedy should have a Catholic funeral. Many who did not think he deserved one based their view on his support for abortion rights. Many who thought he deserved such a ceremony pointed to his advancement of causes championed by Catholic social thinking.

This leads to a question about the consistency of views in the U.S. Catholic Church leadership. The Church opposes abortion and therefore liberal politicians who support abortion rights risk being refused communion. The Church supports a healthcare overhaul that would make the system more equitable. So does a conservative Catholic politician who opposes this reform risk being denied communion for ignoring the Catholic social teaching that justifies it?

(Photo: Anti-abortion protesters outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, 16 June 2004/Jeff Christensen)

How about support for capital punishment, which the Vatican says is unjustified in almost all possible cases, or for war? In the build-up to the Iraq war, Pope John Paul was so opposed to the plan that he sent a personal envoy to Washington to argue against it. Did bishops threaten any measures against Catholic politicians who energetically supported that war despite Vatican opposition?

Years ago in Britain, the Church of England used to be called “the Tory party at prayer.”  Does this apparent difference in treatment of liberal and conservative Catholics risk making the U.S. Church into one section of  “the Republican Party at prayer?”

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Check out the headline at the bottom left of the Sunday Times front page. The man the London paper calls the most powerful banker on Earth says he is “just a banker ‘doing God’s work’” .

The report says Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein“proudly pays himself more in a year than most of us could ever dream of — $68m in 2007 alone, a record for any Wall Street CEO, to add to the more than $500m of Goldman stock he owns” .

Goldman Sachs looks set to pay about $20 billion in bonuses for its top traders this year, at a time when the fallout from last year’s financial crisis is still being felt and the United States unemployment rate has hit 10.2 percent, a 26-1/2-year high.

In his defence, Blankfein said in the interview: “We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle … We have a social purpose.”

(Photo: CHristians pray during an anti-North Korea and pro-U.S. protest in Seoul, 3 Oct 2007/Han Jae-Ho)

The United States sees a mixed picture on world religious freedom, with progress in interfaith dialogue weighed against government repression and sectarian strife in many countries.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday unveiled the latest State Department report on global religious freedom, which particularly criticized Iran and North Korea among other countries for harsh limits on religious expression.

“It is our hope that the … report will encourage existing religious freedom movements around the world,” Clinton said, adding that all people should have the right to believe or not as they see fit.

The report tagged North Korea, Iran, Myanmar, China, Sudan, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan among the worst offenders, placing them on a watch list put out earlier this year.

Michael Posner, the State Department’s top official for democracy and human rights, said President Barack Obama’s call this year for a new beginning between the United States and Muslims did not mean sidelining religious liberty. “Religious freedom is a fundamental right, a social good, a source of stability, and a key to international security,” Posner said in the introduction to the report.

Posner praised interfaith dialogue efforts promoted by Jordan, Spain and other countries. But religious repression and discrimination remained huge problems worldwide.

Clinton said she opposed efforts promoted by some Islamic countries to establish a global benchmark for what constitutes “defamation of a religion,” saying it could be an unacceptable intrusion on free speech rights. “The protection of speech about religion is particularly important since persons of different faith will inevitably hold divergent views on religious questions,” she said.

Read our news story here.

Here is our Factbox summarising the main findings.

For the full International Religious Freedom Report, with links to each country section, click here.

For the full text of Clinton’s remarks, click here.

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A few days after he presented his credentials to Pope Benedict as new U.S. ambassador to the United States, Miguel Humberto Diaz, invited a few journalists to his residence on Rome’s Gianicolo Hill for a chat. It was his first meeting with the media in his new role and I was the only member of a major international news organisation to be invited to the first round.

Diaz, a very amiable man, is the first Hispanic and the first theologian to fill the post of U.S. ambassador. He took questions in English and Italian on a range of topics but most of the comments were centered on what he wanted to make out of the post. Here are some excerpts. The questions have been synthesized to reflect the conversation:

(Photos: Ambassador Diaz and Pope Benedict, October 2, 2009. REUTERS/Osservatore Romano)

How did you get the news that President Obama had chosen you as new envoy and how did you feel?

“When the call came in from the White House I was, like anybody would be, pleasantly surprised and honored and humbled to have this opportunity to serve my country, to serve under this president. I had been part of an advisory team of Catholic theologians and activists during the campaign.

“One of my desires for this president was that this kind of engagement between religious ideas, public service, people of faith and service to one’s country could continue beyond the campaign. I was of the opinion that of religious thinkers could continue to participate in some kind of ongoing advisory group. When I first received the call i thought  that the president was going to ask me to do …  instead I was very honored that the president had selected me to become the next ambassador to the Holy See”

What do you think led President Obama to choose you?

“The president, in his (book) Audacity of Hope, argued in a persuasive way that religious principles, that people of faith have an active role to play in society and that within a democratic and pluralistic society what one needs to have is a persuasive translation of those principles than can be placed at the service of society for the benefit of the common good. So in many ways the professor in Obama spoke to the professor in Diaz. His style and appeal to a reasoned approach to arguments was very much persuasive…”

Won’t you miss being a theologian and an academic?

“Maybe after my appointment as U.S. ambassador I will have time to pursue those kinds of conversation but, again, this is going to be a sacrifice, this is going to hard for me to abandon the classroom and do abandon the pursuit of theological ideas so I can embrace diplomacy …

“it is clear that no other ambassador in the past has been asked to totally shed their past so what I hope is that the theological and philosophical background that I have can somehow be useful in the service of bringing people together, so if I can learn to translate in an effective way — both in terms of communication and in terms of what I do — some of the those basic principles that I believe in, then I think I might be able to become an effective communicators and engage in the kind of things that I like to engage in — inter-religious dialogue, inter-cultural dialogue, inter-racial dialogue for the sake of building peace and the common good for humanity. So if I could somehow tap into that past without offending anyone and certainly by creating bridges then maybe I can succeed as an ambassador.”

Wouldn’t you love to have a one-on-one theological conversation with Pope Benedict, even if it had to be kept secret?

“I guess you’ll never find out if  I have one. But I don’t like to work in secrecy because hardly ever does the press not find out about it. I think that we’re about transparency in this administration so, if I were to have a theological conversation with the pope, I would not like to hide it from the world. I don’t want to operate behind closed doors. But there is no doubt that this is part of who I am but I am also very conscious that as part of who I am know, as ambassador of the United States I am not here primarily to have theological conversations with the Holy Father, but I am here to represent my president, my people, my country…”

How will you build on past relations between the Vatican and Washington?

“We all stand on the shoulders of giants in some ways. We don’t start from scratch. we build on the positive things that others have done. We are celebrating 25 years of formal diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the United States and over those 25 years we have done wonderful work. We have together rejected religion as a means for violence, we have rejected terrorism, we have worked together on issues related to food security and I suspect this will continue to be part of our work. We have worked on trafficking in person and this will be part of out ongoing engagements and in a few days we will have a conference with Caritas Internationalis on the prevention of  transferring HIV/AIDS from mother to child. These are some of the things that have preceded me. Because of my background, because of my educational background, I will invite my co-workers to engage themes such as inter-religious and inter-cultural relations and (seek) ways that we can cooperate with the Vatican and various Catholic organisations to promote these areas for the sake of human peace. Another big issue on the horizon will be climate change. This particular pope has increasingly drawn attention to the issues of distortion of the earth, global warming and so those are also issues that are dear to me …. that will also be on my radar screen.

“Given my educational background and my work with youth I would like to extend a bridge out to young people. the presidency of Barack Obama is a huge magnet of attraction for youth and I would also like to engage in conversations that engage them. As a leader I think one has to listen and one has to judge things as they come up and respond to things as they come up.”

This is only the second Democratic U.S. administration since relations between the Vatican and the United States were established 25 years ago. The last last time there was a democrat in the White House, Bill Clinton, relations were quite tense, particularly over abortion, which came to a head at the U.N. Conference on Population in Cairo in 1994. Do you think there is a danger of this happening again and what do you think your relationship with the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference will be?

(Photo: Pope Benedict and President Obama at the Vatican, 10 July 2009/Osservatore Romano)

“I think I am going to follow the example of my president here. I’m not going to look to the past but to look to the present and the future. I will certainly do everything that I can to keep the lines of communications open between our two countries. I cannot and will not get entangled in the domestic issues because I represent the United States at this international level, from one sovereign entity to another. So that while I think that this is a good conversation that my country is having at the domestic level but that conversation is being held there and I will do the job that the president would like me to do here. There is a differnce between what the U.S.  ambassador should do and what the Holy Father should do as the pastor of the Church which also has responsibility for and a relationship with the local Church. I am not representing the U.S. Church. I don’t have a relationship to the local Church nor to the (U.S.) Conference of Catholic Bishops. Of  course, wherever the dignity of the human person is involved the Holy See is going to have something to say. But I think its important to make that distinction, who is speaking for whom and under what circumstances.”

What other person attributes to you bring to the job?

“I am the child of an exile. I have immigration in my story. I know what it is to live and negotiate between cultures and peoples and speak different languages … I had to mediate with my parents, who still to this day do not speak the English language completely or perfectly … in some ways this was engrained in my very being while growing up.”

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Miguel Humberto Diaz might sound like the name of an ambassador from Spain or any Latin American country, but in fact it belongs to the new American ambassador to the Vatican.

And if any further proof  were needed that things are changing in Obama’s America, consider this: The surnames of the previous ambassadors to the Vatican were: Wilson, Shakespeare, Melady, Glendon, Flynn, Boggs,  Nicholson, Rooney, and Glendon.

In my coverage of the Vatican, I knew most of them well, a few of them very well,  and at least three — Melady, Flynn and Nicholson (two Republicans and a Democrat) — became friends who still keep in touch. Their kindness then and now will always be appreciated.

Still, there is a certain buzz in the air in Rome over the arrival of Diaz, who presented his credentials to Pope Benedict on Friday. The first Latino to get the post, he is Cuban-American (born in Havanna and raised in Miami).  Apart from the last ambassador, Harvard Prof. Mary Ann Glendon, Diaz perhaps knows more about Roman Catholicism and the workings of the Church than any of his predecessors.

But perhaps most significantly, Diaz is a theologian. He was professor of theology at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University, both in Collegeville, Minnesota. He is also  a former president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians fo the United States and board member of the Catholic Theological Society of America.

President Obama, in sum, sent a theologian ambassador to a theologian pope.

As was to be expected, Diaz made his debut at the Vatican with the words of a diplomat. His address to the pope spoke of  mutual concerns such as food shortages, an ethical response to the economic crisis. He  praised the pope as any new envoy would and promised to be a bridge builder between Washington and the Holy See.

Also as was to be expected, the pope’s address to Diaz touched on issues dear to the pope, such as “issues touching the protection of human dignity and respect for the inalienable right to life from the moment of conception to natural death as well as the right to conscientious objection on the part of health care workers, and indeed all citizens.” The full version of the pope’s remarks to Diaz are here.

But one could only imagine how they both might enjoy a private theological discussion. If it ever happens (and I for one would not be surprised if it did)  we will probably never find out about it. Popes are not supposed to do theological one-on-ones with ambassadors.

But then again few, if any, ambassadors to the Vatican have been theologians.

(Photos: Ambassador Diaz and Pope Benedict, 2 Oct 2009/Osservatore Romano)

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Among the areas covered in the just released Pew survey of American public opinion about abortion, one that grabbed my attention asked about factors that influence people’s opinion about the issue.

For those who support abortion rights, only 11 percent cited religious beliefs as the primary influence on their views on the topic; among those who say abortion should be illegal, 53 percent cited faith as their guiding reason. Overall 32 percent of those surveyed cited religious beliefs as the main factor behind their views on abortion.

None of this, mind you, is surprising. Opposition to abortion rights in the United States has been driven primarily by religious conservatives — evangelical and Catholic mostly — and so the figure fits the usual narrative. Few people cite faith as a reason to support abortion rights and so the 11 percent figure in that regard is also what you would expect.

(PHOTO: People gather for the March for Life anti-abortion rally on the National Mall in Washington, January 22, 2009.  REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst   (UNITED STATES)

But looking at the numbers — 53 percent to 11 percent — does highlight how stark America’s religious/secular divide has become. That’s what jumped out at me.

Among white evangelical Protestants, 58 percent cited religious beliefs as the main influence on their opinions about abortion, a number that climbed to 68 percent for those who attend church on a weekly basis. The only surprise here perhaps was that those figures were not even higher.

The other factors cited were education, personal experience, the views of others and media. A surprising number of overall respondents — 21 percent — chose “something else” as the main influence on their take on this polarizing issue. This also caught my eye.

What do you think would fall under the “something else” category in this context?

It’s hard to watch France’s political and cultural elite rush to support filmmaker Roman Polanski against extradition to the United States on a decades-old sex charge and not wonder exactly how they interpret the national motto “liberté, égalité, fraternité.” It’s tempting to ask whether they’re defending the liberty to break the law and skip town, respecting the equality of all before the law and championing a brotherhood of artists who can do no wrong.

(Photo: Roman Polanski, 19 Feb 2009/Hannibal Hanschke)

Here in Paris, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner declared the arrest was “a bit sinister … frankly, (arresting) a man of such talent recognised around the world, recognised in the country where he was arrested — that’s not very nice.” He and his Polish counterpart have written to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the issue. Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand said “just as there is a generous America that we like, there’s also an America that scares us, and that’s the America that has just shown us its face.” Directors, actors and intellectuals have been signing a petition demanding Polanski’s immediate release.

Almost all the focus is on the argument that Polanski is a brilliant director, the charge of unlawful sex with a 13-year old dates back to 1977 and the victim herself says she wants the whole issue to be forgotten.  Almost completely ignored is the fact that he fled the U.S. to escape sentencing, which added a crime to the original crime. There is such a widespread assumption that all artists and intellectuals would automatically support Polanski that Paris papers today — both the left-of-centre Libération and the conservative Le Figaro — wrote with an air of surprise that Hollywood was not storming the barricades to back him.

The French Greens leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit made headlines by bucking the trend and saying he was “ill at ease” with the rush to absolve Polanski of raping a minor and the culture minister should have been more cautious in his comments.

Across the Atlantic, by contrast, Hollywood’s hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times, reviewed the objections by Polanski’s supporters and concluded: “Plausible or preposterous, these arguments are eclipsed by a simple fact: Polanski fled the country … the Justice Department and L.A.’s district attorney are right to seek extradition.”

And almost nobody in the media here in France asks the tough questions that Fr. Tom Reese, S.J. (photo at right) did in his Washington Post blog post entitled “Father Polanski would go to jail”:
“Polanski’s defenders … argue that he should not be punished. They say that the girl was willing and sexually experienced and she has forgiven him (after receiving a settlement). They even cite his tragic childhood and life as an excuse. And besides, it is ancient history. Such arguments from paedophile priests would be laughed out of court and lambasted by everyone, and rightly so…

“The Catholic Church has rightly been put under a microscope when 4 percent of its priests were involved in abuse, but what about the film industry? The world has truly changed. Entertainment is the new religion with sex, violence and money the new Trinity. The directors and stars are worshipped and quickly forgiven for any infraction as long as the PR agent is as skilled as a saintly confessor. Entertainment, not religion, is the new opiate of the people and we don’t want our supply disturbed.

“Is there a double standard here? You bet.”

There’s a lot to say about the different ways Americans and French approach the law. But let’s go right to Tom Reese’s question. Do you think Polanski’s supporters cut him slack they wouldn’t think of permitting for a paedophile priest? Is the entertainment industry setting our values?

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U.S. conservative Christians, a key base for the out-of-power Republican Party, gathered in Washington on Friday to rally the faithful against President Barack Obama’s agenda, including his top domestic priority of healthcare reform.

Obama’s falling poll numbers and what they depict as his ultra-liberal views on abortion rights, healthcare and climate change are galvanizing a group that could prove vital to Republican prospects of taking back control of Congress in the 2010 congressional elections or the White House in 2012.

Conservative activists see exploitable opportunities in Obama’s policies and performance that also can stir more centrist voters, such as suspicions of “big government” and the almost uniquely American skepticism of global warming that prevails in much of the heartland.

You can read the whole story here.

(PHOTO: President Barack Obama holds a rally on health insurance reform at the Comcast Center at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland, September 17, 2009. REUTERS/Larry Downing)

Wanted: a leader for the U.S. social conservative movement. Must be able to press all the right buttons, be a committed Christian and have a vision to propel the Republican Party back to power.

U.S. social and religious conservatives will be searching for someone to fill that void as they gather in Washington this Friday to Sunday for the fourth annual summit of self-styled “Values Voters.”

(Photo: Conservative protesters near the U.S. Capitol in Washington, 12 Sept 2009/Mike Theiler)

Dubbed the “Religious Right,” they have been stirred by a summer of discontent when their activists went on the offensive against Democratic President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority of healthcare reform, taking part in widely publicized town hall meetings on the issue that often turned raucous.

Formerly high-profile leaders of the religious right such as televangelist Jerry Falwell and political operative Ralph Reed have died or retreated from prominence. Last year’s economic crisis helped propel Obama to the White House.

“Social conservatives are looking for leadership and this is one of the places these folks are going to be shopping,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian lobby group organizing the summit.

Read the whole story here.