One Muslim organization has declined an invitation to meet Pope Benedict XVI at next Thursday’s Interfaith Meeting in Washington, the Associated Press reports, and another will attend out of respect for the Catholic Church, but not for Benedict. The Muslim Public Affairs Council, which will not attend the April 17 event, stated on its website:

Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born writer in Italy, was one of seven people chosen by the Pope to be baptized before millions on Easter Sunday. This move by the Pope revived memories of the Regensburg speech in 2006, which sought to brand Islam as inherently violent.

While there is no compulsion in matters of faith, and people have the right to follow any religion they choose, the Pope made the conversion out to be a victory for Catholicism. The act of conversion itself was not offensive, but rather, the high-profile nature of how the conversion was carried out was insulting to Muslims. The fact that the conversion took place at St. Peter’s Basilica, one of the most sacred locations for Christians, and on the holiest day of the Christian calendar carried a negative message of competition and superiority. Unfortunately, these recent events are neither constructive, nor conducive to effective interfaith dialogue.

Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council, told the AP that the April 17 meeting was “more ceremonial than substantive” and that MPAC had declined the invitation.

Another Muslim organization, the Fiqh Council of North America, will attend, but “Our going there is more out of respect for the Catholic Church itself,” the AP quotes its chairman, Muzammil H. Siddiqi. “Popes come and go, but the church is there,” Mr. Siddiqi added, in an apparent snub at the Pope.

In the Easter issue of Dappled Things, a magazine devoted to the artistic and cultural life of young Catholics in America, First Things contributor Matthew Milliner writes on how Catholics can renew the world of contemporary art. Playing off the title of Joseph Bottum’s article “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano: Catholic Culture in America,” Milliner titles his piece “When the Eagles Don’t Fit in Capistrano,” and his suggestions are quite compelling:

My art history professor there was John Walford, a stately Cambridge-trained Brit, and in this lecture he outlined different strategies for Christian engagement of the world of art, using birds as a typology. There was the phoenix, which sought to resurrect the great Christian art of the past, but ran the risk of merely resurrecting a corpse. There was the parrot, offering only timid imitations of contemporary art. Then there was the bald eagle, which rose above resuscitation or replica with soaring, original talent. The note Walford ended on, however, was not the eagle–such a rare bird–but the sparrow. Eagles, be they Raphael, Rembrandt or Rouault, are needed; but more likely most of us are artistic sparrows. The aim of the sparrow, in Walford’s typology, was not to make an indelible impact on the art world or provide the next chapter in art history (perhaps now too fragmented to even be written). The aim of the sparrow was more modest. Sparrows enhance the life of a local community, providing for aesthetic needs the same way a family doctor or local schoolteacher provide their respective services. The names of these sparrows, explained Walford, “will rarely appear in art books, but their contribution is nevertheless invaluable. They paint or sculpt for the local community much as Van Goyen and Ruisdael did for the citizens of Leiden and Amsterdam.” . . .

The eagles coming back to Capistrano is a rather horrifying image. At best the mission could support one, and even that would be distracting. Notre Dame de Toute Grace sought to sponsor several, and a case could be made that it is indeed, a rather distracting space. Worshipping there, as I did several years ago, one is tempted to contemplate art history more than the Mass. Even birds as large as seagulls descending on a church only brings to mind Alfred Hitchcock. Perhaps a better model for the renewal of Catholic and Protestant culture is a slow, steady cultivation of serious faithful art, guided by traditional formations, yet free also to move–cautiously– in unexpected directions. The pattern for this is less the Renaissance than the Middle Ages, when the glory of artists gave way to the greater glory of God.

In connection with the ongoing controversy over the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod radio station KFUO’s pulling of the popular program Issues, Etc., which has been discussed in this space as well as a host of other blogs, a prayer service and a demonstration are planned for April 13 and 14, respectively, in St. Louis. The stated purpose is to demonstrate “displeasure at the lack of a comprehensive and believable answer to our question: ‘Why was “Issues, Etc.” canceled?’”

The planned events promise to be “silent to commemorate the silencing of ‘Issues, Etc.’ and to symbolize the synod’s silence on the real reasons for its cancellation.”

Participants also promise to be “peaceful, prayerful, and loving. We will not be loud, angry, or hostile.”

Evangelical Lutheran Church U.A.C. (Unaltered Augsburg Confession) is where the prayer service will be held.

You will need to register should you care to participate in service/dinner/demonstration. Bratwurst will be served, which may prove a disincentive for some.

UPDATE: A transcript of Pastor Asburry’s Sunday Evening Prayer homily is available here. Live blogging of the demonstration will be available at the Augsburg 1530 site.

The order of service for all US ceremonies during the upcoming papal visit was released today. I didn’t find any big surprises, although the plans for the Youth Rally at Dunwoodie in New York are outlined in greater detail. Those present will be singing “Happy Birthday” in German to the Pope. He will be presented with numerous gifts, including bread, maize, and corn, as symbols of the heritages present in the American melting pot. No word on the papal skateboard, but we’ll keep our eyes open.

And if you missed the video of Benedict’s address before the visit, it’s below. Note the call to prayer and personal encounter with God, the professorial and paternal manner, and the extremely endearing German accent. God willing, we’ll be hearing more of this in the near future.

On this day sixty-three years ago, Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged (actually slowly asphyxiated to death) at Flossenburg Prison, a mere three weeks before it was liberated by Allied forces. Bonhoeffer had been imprisoned for his role in the July 20 Plot, the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. Bonhoeffer was caught only when money used to help Jews escape to Switzerland was traced back to the pastor.

Today is a day to remember the cost of discipleship:

Suffering then is the badge of true discipleship. The disciple is not above his master. . . . That is why Luther reckoned suffering among the marks of the true Church. . . . If we refuse to take up our cross and submit to suffering and rejection at the hands of men, we forfeit our fellowship with Christ and have ceased to follow Him. But if we lose our lives in His service and carry out cross, we shall find our lives again in the fellowship of the cross with Christ. The opposite of discipleship is to be ashamed of Christ and His cross and all the offense which the cross brings in its train. — The Cost of Discipleship (1937)

I would say this is splendid, but that’s not allowed. First Things writer Dimitri Cavalli sends along this amusing and instructive catalogue of writing dos and don’ts, compiled in 1915 by The Kansas City Star and given to Ernest Hemingway during his stint as a police and emergency-room reporter. Hemingway praised this guide as offering the “best rules I ever learned in the business of writing.” *Prospective FT authors, take heed!*

Here are some of the more edifying entries:

• A Woman of the Name of Mary Jones—Disrespect is attached to the individual in such sentences. Avoid it. Never use it even in referring to street walkers.
• Avoid the use of adjectives, especially such extravagant ones as splendid, gorgeous, grand, magnificent, etc.
• Say evening clothes, not full dress. [A common error on our pages.]
• “He was made unconscious,” not “he was rendered unconscious.” “He died on the sidewalk” not “He fell dead on the sidewalk.”
• The police tried to find her husband, not tried to locate her husband. To locate, used as a transitive verb, means to establish.
• The Star does not use “dope” or “dope fiend.” Use habit forming drugs or narcotics and addicts.
• “He suffered a broken leg in a fall,” not “he broke his leg in a fall.” He didn’t break the leg, the fall did. Say a leg, not his leg, because presumably the man has two legs.
• “She was born in Ireland and came to Jackson County in 1874″ not “but came to Jackson County.” She didn’t come here to make amends for being born in Ireland. This is a common abuse of the conjunction.
• Such words as “tots,” “urchins,” and “mites of humanity” are not to be used in writing of children. In certain cases, where “kids” conveys the proper shading and fits the story, it is permissible.

And, a final word of wisdom: “He died of heart disease, not heart failure—everybody dies of heart failure.”

FOR THE MOST COMPLETE VIEW OF THE PAPAL VISIT, you will want to watch EWTN (check your cable listings), where Father Neuhaus will be cohosting with Raymond Arroyo the coverage of all events in Washington and New York. We are hopeful that Father Neuhaus will also have some daily postings on this website.

Kelefa Sanneh, long the New York Times’ hip-hop correspondent, now shifts his attention to theology in a New Yorker profile of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Senator Obama’s pastor. Wright’s public avowal of the “black liberation theology” of James Cone raised eyebrows after the February airing of some of Wright’s sermons. Cone, as I documented in a recent essay, argued that Jesus was black, and that blacks are the Chosen People.

In Sanneh’s account, Rev. Wright goes well beyond James Cone in promulgating an Afrocentric theology, with a declared affinity for the Islam of Louis Farrakhan. As Sanneh reports:

Although Cone’s work had a major influence on him, Wright was carried along, too, by his own research and inclinations. He criticized Cone’s assertion that blacks “were completely stripped of their African heritage as they were enslaved,” and argued that the black Church should engage more with the African roots of its worshippers: he defined Trinity as “a congregation with a non-negotiable commitment to Africa.”…

Like Cone in the nineteen-sixties, Wright may have worried that he would be judged, and found wanting, by purer and less forgiving forms of black nationalism. Farrakhan represented the threat; his followers—particularly the young black men whom churches sometimes had trouble reaching—represented the prize.

Wright attended (but didn’t address) the Million Man March, the 1995 gathering in Washington that Farrakhan convened to promote self-reliance and “spiritual renewal” among black men. In the months afterward, Wright delivered a series of sermons that were reprinted in a book, “When Black Men Stand Up for God,” which presents a Christian response to the challenge posed by the Nation of Islam. In it, he lambastes the preachers who opposed the march on political or religious grounds: they had missed a prime opportunity to present their case to African-American men. And, by way of establishing his bona fides, he reminds readers that he studied Islam at the University of Chicago. “I have a different perspective on Islam than the average preacher,” he writes. “Islam and Christianity are a whole lot closer than you may realize. Islam comes out of Christianity.”

Presumably, Senator Obama didn’t hear those sermons, either.

As you may or may not know, Oliver Stone is making a film based on the life of the president, entitled W, starring Josh Brolin as Bush. It’s way too easy to begin with the jokes—not about W, but about W, and the director’s “gift” for creative re-imaginings: Think JFK and Nixon.

Slate has come across Stone’s (actually Stanley Weiser’s) screenplay and offers some snippets. It reads like an SNL skit meets a Nation editorial meeting wherein the participants, drunk on righteous indignation and still recovering from the failure of that whole communism thing, imagine how decisions were made in the Bush White House. (Warning to the fainthearted: The “president” uses really icky language when he’s angry. You won’t like the fake W when he’s angry. I’m sure there are some of you who don’t even like the real W when he’s clement.)

In short, I doubt the film will have much to say—or imagine—about the president that hasn’t already been said and imagined over and over and over again. How much is truth, speculation, satire, or outright baloney is anybody’s guess. The final product will most probably fall somewhere between a Michael Moore mockumentary (the dime-store psychology stuff and invented intra-family dialogue) and a sad-to-say all-too-accurate depiction of how decisions were made in the Bush White House.

In any event, the film won’t open until the real W is out of office. I suspect that, by then, most people will be Bush-bashed out and happy to focus on the future.

BTW: The L.A. Times offers photos of the cast.

Update: Biographers question Stone/Weiser’s portrait of Bush 43. Ya think?

The news this morning is that Father Servais Pinckaers, O.P., has died after a long period of debilitation. His history of Christian ethics and other writings—and especially his acute distinction between the “freedom of indifference” and the “freedom of excellence”—has had a powerful influence in Christian circles, and not only among Catholics, and certainly not only among Thomists.

One expects that influence will grow in the years ahead. May choirs of angels welcome him on the far side of Jordan.

“I have a son. His name is Christopher. He would be nearly thirty-three years old, if I hadn’t made that fateful choice when I was nineteen.…On July 2, 1973, I walked into the hospital pregnant, and walked out without an infant in my arms.”

So begins the story of Marie’s motherhood—a story tragically pierced by her decision, as a terrified college freshman from a nice and average family, to undergo an abortion. But that is not the end of Marie’s story, nor the end of her motherhood.

Motherhood Interrupted: Stories of Healing and Hope after Abortion poignantly details sixteen journeys—sixteen children lost, and mothers found—in the women’s own words. “It is my hope that after reading my story and the stories of the other women in this book,” says editor Jane Brennan, “many women who have had abortions will not be afraid to tell their own secrets. We all need to let other women know that abortion is not just a clinical procedure or fundamental right, but tragedy. In and beyond this tragedy, there is forgiveness, but if we don’t speak out, other women will have to endure the pain.”

Looking back thirty-three years, Christopher’s mother describes how she sat in a movie theater shortly after her abortion, and found herself staring at the mother and child in front of her: “My baby. I was completely undone.” Marie’s tears turned to depression, but she couldn’t yet pinpoint the root cause of her heartbreak. She eventually married and threw her battered heart into her work at an abortion clinic. “It was a very sad place to work,” she recalls, “they had counseling sessions weekly for the staff.” But God’s gentle grace can penetrate even the most hostile circumstances, in Marie’s case through the birth of a healthy baby girl—“a miracle.” In time she found her way back to the Church and was touched by its post-abortive ministries, learning to accept the forgiveness of God and the compassion of his children; learning to ask forgiveness from the son she never met, and to hope for their meeting in heaven.

Hers is a tragic story, but—for herself and for others—it is a story that needs to be told. As Pope John Paul the Great wrote in Evangelium Vitae:

The wound in your heart may not yet have healed. Certainly what happened was and remains terribly wrong. But do not give in to discouragement and do not lose hope. Try rather to understand what happened and face it honestly. If you have not already done so, give yourselves over with humility and trust to repentance. The Father of mercies is ready to give you his forgiveness and his peace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. To the same Father and his mercy you can with sure hope entrust your child. With the friendly and expert help and advice of other people, and as a result of your own painful experience, you can be among the most eloquent defenders of everyone’s right to life. Through your commitment to life, whether by accepting the birth of other children or by welcoming and caring for those most in need of someone to be close to them, you will become promoters of a new way of looking at human life.

Christians hope in the Gospel’s promise, the mystery of love at the heart of Salvation: In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. A collection of accounts of post-abortive suffering and healing is more than a string of emotional anecdotes. It is a glimpse into the reality of the culture of death—and the reality of its conquest. Moreover, it is a glimpse into our call to participate in Redemption.

Story after story reveals that compassion—literally, the willingness to suffer with the suffering—expressed by church communities and family members, is priceless balm for the women who have been wounded by abortion. It necessarily draws from, and crucially points to, the most precious gift of all, God’s forgiveness and grace. As one woman says, echoing the words of St. Paul: “He is the source of all comfort. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all out troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. (1 Cor. 3-4). His Word is the final Word.”

It is the hope of the cross and the hope of Easter, the hope that never dies:

Death with life contended: Combat strangely ended!
Life’s own Champion, slain, yet lives to reign.

The man who parted the Red Sea, who dared dicker with his pontiff, who sought justice in a border town, who fought zombies, talking apes, and pagans: Charlton Heston is dead at age 84.

Richard Corliss over at Time has a respectful overview of his life and career. Christianity Today film reviewer Peter Chattaway offers his own thoughts on Heston’s late-career cameos.

Heston was one of those towering figures you could count on to bring a certain dignity to even the most surreal premises, and who wouldn’t get swallowed up or overwhelmed by CinemaScope. Who’s left of his generation of equal stature? Peter O’Toole. Maybe Connery. That’s about it.

I always wondered if Heston wouldn’t have crafted a better Howard Roark in The Fountainhead than the one fashioned by Gary Cooper. Even Cooper was disappointed with his rendering of Roark’s final court speech, which laid bare his—read: Ayn Rand’s—philosophy. (I am, however, retrojecting an older and epic-tested Heston back into a 1949 film. The original adaptation of the Rand novel would never have been greenlighted with an inexperienced youth in the lead, and it is very unlikely that Heston could have pulled off Roark’s self-assurance and capital-P Presence that early in his career.)

In any event, a few choice lines from the films Heston did, in fact, make:

“A policeman’s job is only easy in a police state.”

“There are no strangers among those who seek God’s forgiveness.”

“Soylent Green is people!”

“You may conquer the land. You may slaughter the people. But that is not the end. We will rise again.”

And, of course:

Here’s a very interesting review of a book on what all those ribbons and activist badges say about our culture. A sample:

In many respects, Ribbon Culture is an analysis of several apparently contradictory aspects of contemporary culture. The ribbon is, explains Moore, ‘both a kitsch fashion accessory, as well as an emblem that expresses empathy; it is a symbol that represents awareness, yet requires no knowledge of a cause; it appears to signal concern for others, but in fact prioritises self-expression’.

The great strength of this book is the way that it unpacks these different features of ribbon-wearing, in an account that is both sympathetic and critical. Nowhere does Moore mock the intentions or practices of her ribbon-wearing interviewees, though sometimes she must surely have been tempted: ‘When I asked one of the young female interviewees who wore a pink-ribbon t-shirt what made her choose to wear the garment on certain days, I was seeking to understand whether there were certain situations, relationships and experiences that prompted her to show her awareness of breast cancer. Her keen reply took me by surprise: “I think ‘it’s got pink in it, what goes with pink?’ Actually I wear it with this skirt quite a lot …”.’

For Moore, this is not an example of individual silliness, but a reflection of the extent to which ‘the pink-ribbon campaign is a thoroughly commercial exercise’, which carries the risk ‘that the products will fail to communicate anything meaningful about breast cancer’. It is the commercialisation of causes, which both empties them of all content and transmits messages that are negative and misleading, that Moore sees as problematic. In seeking to understand why the individuals she interviewed wear the ribbons or wristbands that they do, Moore’s account stands out through her refusal to pander to the rhetoric of ribbon culture, which emphasises ‘awareness’, ‘caring’ and engagement with a cause. In reality, these positive rhetorical sentiments mask an anxious, self-obsessed, depoliticised culture.

Via Arts & Letters Daily

I was puzzled by Charles Larmore’s review of Charles Taylor’s new book, A Secular Age, in the current New Republic.

The book is sprawling and often maddening, but it is very important (I’ve tried to do it justice in my own review in the forthcoming issue of First Things), and I give Larmore high marks for his accurate (if prickly) summaries of the complex argument. And I agree with his criticisms of Taylor’s prose, though I refused to make much of the matter in my own review, since this book is a kind of valediction from an exceptionally important and valuable thinker, and it seemed an inappropriate moment to dwell on such things.

But Larmore’s very hostile take on Taylor’s conclusions is . . . strange, though alas quite in line with what you expect from New Republic reviews of books having to do with religion. He really types Taylor as, at bottom, little more than a narrow and fideistic and sectarian Catholic, which is simply not the case; if anything, one wishes Taylor were not so anxious to avoid being taken for one, and that he would come down a bit more strongly on his own side.

Larmore says that this is a book written by a Catholic for Catholics, but that has it completely wrong. It is written for almost everyone else, which both its virtue and its problem. It is a remarkably generous book. But its getting such an ungenerous reception from an otherwise capable reader shows, sadly, that no matter how many concessions one makes to the cultured despisers, there are only a few of them who will really listen. That is no reason not to keep trying, of course. But it is a reason to weigh every concession carefully.

If we never mention the New Atheists again—they’re atheists! and they’re new!—I’d be just as glad. They always seem to me giddy with the fumes of a dying worldview, and there’s little in them that wasn’t said more forcefully by Robert G. Ingersoll. Haven’t we been there and done all that? And haven’t we moved on?

Ah, well. I guess not, and I find I’m nearly alone in my boredom with the new genre. All my more pugnacious friends—Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he / That every man in arms should wish to be?—are energized by the struggle. David Berlinski, for instance, has a sharp new book just out: The Devil’s Delusion.

I first got to know David when he began publishing in Commentary in the 1990s, and his science writing always struck me as sensible and smart. In this new book, he admits that he is not a strong religious believer—but, sensibly and smartly, he finds he just can’t stand the scientific and philosophical pretension in the New Atheists.

Meanwhile, Michael Novak has galleys ready for No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Unbelievers, his new book coming out shortly. Again, it looks sensible and smart, and it relates the New Atheism to the religious experience of the “dark night of the soul.”

I would recommend either, recommend both, as the good, exciting reads they actually are—if I weren’t so determined to maintain the pose that I’m bored by the topic.

Usually architects and artists seeking immortality by creating great works of art that will outlast them. But Madeline Gins and Arawaka, a husband and wife team of architects, have created a house that is designed to give its occupants a kind of immortality. The New York Times reports:

In 45 years of working together as artists, poets and architects, they have developed an arcane philosophy of life and art, a theory they call reversible destiny. Essentially, they have made it their mission — in treatises, paintings, books and now built projects like this one — to outlaw aging and its consequences.

“It’s immoral that people have to die,” Ms. Gins explained.

And how do you keep people from the immorality of death?

In addition to the floor, which threatens to send the un-sure-footed hurtling into the sunken kitchen at the center of the house, the design features walls painted, somewhat disorientingly, in about 40 colors; multiple levels meant to induce the sensation of being in two spaces at once; windows at varying heights; oddly angled light switches and outlets; and an open flow of traffic, unhindered by interior doors or their adjunct, privacy.

All of it is meant to keep the occupants on guard. Comfort, the thinking goes, is a precursor to death; the house is meant to lead its users into a perpetually “tentative” relationship with their surroundings, and thereby keep them young.

It is all quite remarkable, as is the architects’ frank assertion that they should win the Nobel Prize for this work. Reading about their philosophy and its fruit, I was reminded that despite the bumpy floor, the multiple levels, and the bright colors, the house and its designers are still made of dust, and unto dust shall they all return. From this inevitable return, they will need a greater savior than their own genius, no matter how exotic its creations may be.

In the New York Sun today, John Merriman reviews a new book on Napoleon. It’s a nice review, but this line caught my eye: “Napoleon modestly portrayed himself as ‘the savior,’ and, although not a religious person, encouraged comparisons with Jesus Christ.”

Isn’t there something a little off about that “although”? Encouraging people to think of you as Jesus is something you can do because you’re not religious, isn’t it?

A blog has been started to investigate further the reasons for the cancellation of the popular KFUO.org radio progam Issues, Etc.. Among the bloggers is Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, whose Wall Street Journal piece located the cancellation within the context of larger denominational issues.

Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod president Gerald Kieschnick responded to Mollie’s piece. He was not amused. Nor was he very effective, as the “reasons” given for the hammer-drop have been pretty much picked apart on various Lutheran blogs.

Augsburg 1530 offers, among other things, an open letter to the synod president that you can sign.

It takes a lot to get Lutherans to shift into activist mode. We pretty much believe if you’re agitated about something, you’re probably a Baptist. And any kind of ventilation (like breathing) is frowned upon for fear of a charismatic renewal. So believe me, Issues, Etc. is going to come back in some form, somewhere. It’s just not a good idea to get Lutherans angry. Last time this happened, historians ended up calling it the Thirty Years War.*

*For the overly literal—THAT WAS A JOKE, not a call for violence. If you are so inclined, you might want to sign the petition; sign the open letter; if you’re able, support Todd Wilken and Jeff Schwarz financially—and continue to follow the Wittenberg Trail.

Update: Ya gotta love this.

Is there such a thing as a tech-savvy Luddite? If so, Lance Ulanoff, editor in chief of PC Magazine, qualifies.

(Note to self: Remember club-and-burlap-bag “motivation” tool . . .)

The bishops of the United States created Catholic Relief Services (CRS) as an agency for the charitable activities of the US Catholic Church in foreign countries. In 1986, CRS began an HIV/AIDS program. Part of the stated policy of that program is to supply full and accurate information about condoms but not to promote their use. CRS forbids putting its name and logo on materials conveying the information it supplies about condoms. 

It seems to me that the Catholic Church–and its agencies–can rightly engage in activities only insofar as they are an appropriate part of the Church’s apostolate, and that activities from which the Church and her agencies must distance themselves cannot pertain to her apostolate. Moreover, I investigated the information that CRS is supplying, and found that some of it clearly seems to promote their use. It seemed to me that the bishops ought to investigate this agency. After reflection, I judged that publicizing what I had found would strengthen the hand of Archbishop Dolan–who became Chair of the CRS Board only last November–in leading the Board, and the NCCB as a whole, in carryout out the needed investigation. 

I therefore wrote an article that is appearing in the April issue of Catholic World Report. You may find the article and the CRS documents on which it is based on the magazine’s website: http://www.ignatius.com/Magazines/CWR/ 

My argument does not presuppose or imply that promoting condom use is intrinsically immoral, nor am I asserting that CRS’s activities are at odds with Catholic teaching about condom use. My argument is that providing information from which one must distance oneself cannot manifest Jesus’ love of his brothers and sisters and cannot help those who receive the information to meet Jesus, learn what he offers us fallen humans, and respond to his gospel and his love. If I am right, the responsible CRS officials are betraying not only the bishops but the entire Catholic Church in the United States, donors to CRS who intend their contributions to be used in a charitable apostolate, those who ought to benefit from that apostolate, those pressed into complicity, and, above all, Jesus himself. 

Some bishops’ failure to take firm and prompt action needlessly escalated a few clerics’ and religious men’s seduction of minors into a disaster. Please pray that the US bishops act promptly and firmly to prevent another, similar disaster. If you can encourage Archbishop Dolan or any other US bishop to fulfill his responsibilities in this matter, please do so.