July 17, 2007 | 12:57 am

Why the Jews freed the murderer

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Many a pogroms have been incited by Passion plays and the idea that Jews were to blame for Jesus’ death. After all, they let a murderer—that filthy murderer Barabbas—go free while Christ was hung on a tree.

I’ve long thought this ridiculous and still do. But at church Sunday night I began to see this story differently from the Jewish perspective (yes: church and Jewish perspective).

I’ve read countless times the passage in the Gospel of Mark where Pontius Pilate asks the crowd of Jews which prisoner he should free—the Messiah or the murderer—but I hadn’t paid attention to the way Barabbas is described in Ch. 15 as “among the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection.”

“Barabbas,” the Rev. Mark Brewer of Bel Air Presbyterian then said, “was like a freedom fighter for the Jews, who had probably slit some Roman soldiers throat.”

Learning that, I wondered under which circumstances the Roman-ruled Jews would have chosen to free a man believed to be a Jewish heretic and who said he was going to destroy the temple over someone they believed was fighting for the physical and political freedom of the Israelites.

July 16, 2007 | 5:15 pm

Cardinal Mahony on Line 1

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony has been eating some much-deserved crow since the Archdiocese of LA, which he heads, agreed Saturday to settle for $660 million with about 500 people who had accused Catholic Church priests of abusing them.

He offered this apology at Mass yesterday, and he just got done getting grilled by my former colleague Chris Weinkopf, the Catholic editor over the LA Daily News’ editorial pages. Here are some the notes from their conversation (Weinkopf in bold, Mahony below):

I tried to stress the difference between “I’m sorry about what’s happened to you” versus “I’m sorry for what I have done.” Isn’t there an important difference between the two?

That’s true, but that’s not what (victims are) looking for. They would love to meet the offender and hear him say that. They’re looking for an apology from the Church.

On why he didn’t call the police when he learned of abuses:

Unfortunately, in those times we just didn’t do that as readily, we didn’t understand the depth of the problem…. The McMartin trial was first time in the state of California that this whole issue came into the spotlight, into the light of day…

In those days we didn’t think of it in those terms. We would send (offenders) to a licensed psychologist, psychiatrist, or therapist we knew and we told the police that if they discovered there really was an abuse that they would notify law enforcement….

 

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July 16, 2007 | 3:07 pm

Borderline humor wouldn’t fly for whites, blacks or Jews

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Gregory Rodriguez makes a solid claim in the LA Times today that the news media exacts ethnic stereotypes on the Latinos leaders it covers. His case study is the coverage of LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s affair with a Telemundo newscaster.

LAST WEEK, I got a phone call from a television news producer who asked me what Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s extramarital affair revealed about the nature of Latino political leadership. I told her I’d agree to be interviewed on air only if we could explore what Bill Clinton’s dalliances said about white people or Jesse Jackson’s fling with an aide told us about black activists. Dumbfounded, she asked if I could refer her to someone else. ...

Reporters from a variety of newspapers, including The Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and the LA Weekly made lame comparisons between the mayor’s affair and telenovelas, Spanish-language soap operas. Do you think they didn’t write “soap opera” because the English-language versions lack sufficient sex and intrigue? Or maybe it was a cute way to ascribe this behavior, as opposed to planting trees, to his ethnicity. ...

I’m surprised no newspaper ran a cartoon of the mayor sporting a pencil mustache, a Zorro mask and a rose clenched between his teeth.

Granted, some, like Gustavo Arellano, have voiced frustration that the highest-ranking Latino politician in the country would behave so recklessly. But Rodriguez makes a good point that all the “ethnic innuendo” wouldn’t be tolerated if L.A.‘s philandering mayor was Anglo, black or Jewish.

Imagine if New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the grandson of a Russian Jewish immigrant, were embroiled in some sort of scandal over his kid’s marriage, would a mainstream newspaper say the meshugeneh mayor’s predicament was straight out of “Fiddler on the Roof”? Probably not. In fact, last week an Associated Press story stated bluntly that in New York, “Bloomberg isn’t known … as the Jewish mayor.”

(Cartoon: Downtown News)

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July 16, 2007 | 9:51 am

Porn star to priest

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Remember that story I wrote last month about the born-again porn star? Well, if the report in Sunday’s New York Times is accurate—and there is reason to believe it isn’t—the adult star formerly known as Rod Fontana is about to take that conversion a step further.

After turning his life over to Jesus earlier this year, Ronald Boyer is considering turning his nascent ministry, which reminds me of this story, into a path to the priesthood, the NYT reports.

From his work in the rented villas of the San Fernando Valley, where hard-core sex films are shot, he has moved just a short distance west, to the Church of the Epiphany, which is guiding his transformation from pornography star to preacher.

(skip)

Mr. Boyer’s embryonic ministry, devoted to bringing spiritual comfort to those marginalized by the sex industry, is driven by his deep faith and by a medical crisis that threatened the life of his child. But it is a work in progress, fraught with the contradictions and internal struggles of a man leaving behind a livelihood that was central to his identity.

He has tired of performing in sex movies, but even now doesn’t condemn it. “Not one time did Jesus refer to pornography, or homosexuality,” he observed on the Internet show, which he began as a co-host in May. “Jesus could have commented. He didn’t.”

But Boyer’s pastor, who was not contacted by the NYT, says the story is full of holes.

  “That’s wrong on so many levels,” Mitchel told epiScope. “I’m his pastor, so of course I’m guiding him in that spiritual sense. But no one at Epiphany knows—or knew—about his background, except some key people on the staff. And no one is training him for ordained ministry at any level.”

Calling a key figure like the born-again pornographer’s pastor seems like journalism 101. Complaints about the accuracy of this NYT reporter’s research are not uncommon.

(Hat-tip: LAObserved)

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July 16, 2007 | 8:43 am

Saudis to behead nanny

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This is God’s justice? Sending a teenager who didn’t have a lawyer at trial to be publicly beheaded because the baby in her care died in her arms? From The Guardian, via the Bible Belt Blogger:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP)—Rizana Nafeek, a 19-year housemaid from Sri Lanka, is on death row because the baby in her care died while she was bottle-feeding him. If her appeal is turned down, she will be taken to a public square to be publicly beheaded.

The Sri Lankan government says it is working for a reprieve, and has until Monday to file the plea. A last-minute pardon by the infant’s parents could also spare her. But if her execution goes ahead, it will be the latest in a surge of beheadings that could surpass the kingdom’s record of 191 in 2005.

(skip)

“Allah, our creator, knows best what’s good for his people,’’ Suhaila Hammad of Saudi Arabia’s National Society for Human Rights told The Associated Press. “Should we just think of and preserve the rights of the murderer and not think of the rights of others?’’

Beheadings are carried out with a sword, with police holding back spectators and making sure no one takes photos. Prisoners, usually sedated, are made to kneel, flanked by clerics and law enforcement officials and facing the victim’s family.

“The prisoner now recites verses from the Quran while a government official reads the charges and the verdict,’’ according to an account in Arab News, a Saudi daily. “Halfway through the reading the executioner suddenly nicks the back of the prisoner’s neck with his sword, causing him to tense and raise his head involuntarily.’’ Then, in one swift move, the prisoner is decapitated.

The report says the baby was choking and that the prisoner was trying to sooth the child to help it breathed. When it died, she confessed to killing it. But how is this murder? SIDS kills about 2,500 American children each year—are the grieving parents of those children culpable?

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July 15, 2007 | 9:54 pm

Evangelical Christians lost in the political desert

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Dallas Morning News had a front-page story yesterday about evangelical Christians’ growing frustration with Republican presidential candidates, which as the paper’s religion blog put it, includes “a Mormon (Mitt Romney), a Catholic who supports abortion rights (Rudy Giuliani), and a senator who has more than once told the religious right to stuff it (John McCain).”

Long the driving force behind Republican success, many Christian conservatives are disappointed over the GOP’s failure to deliver on issues they care about and divided over the candidates and moral agenda that will animate them.

For that and other reasons, the conservative Christian movement faces a moment of political decision. Its ultimate champion, George W. Bush, is in the final stage of his presidency. The candidates to replace him have received a lackluster reaction from voters such as Mr. Brookshire. Democrats are starting to claim the mantle of faith in a different way. And many conservative evangelicals are beginning to question the movement’s political priorities and focus instead on issues from the environment to terrorism.

 

I’ve written before that the evangelical vote is up for grabs, which is one reason Democrats seem to be pandering so much to people of faith.

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July 14, 2007 | 2:35 pm

LA Church to pay big for its pedophile priests *

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

There have been some big settlements so far, but the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s agreement to pay $600 million to abuse victims, according to the AP, trumps them all.

Attorneys for the archdiocese and the plaintiffs are expected to announce the deal Monday, the day the first of more than 500 clergy abuse cases was scheduled for jury selection, according to two people with knowledge of the agreement. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the settlement had not been made public. The archdiocese and its insurers will pay between $600 million and $650 million to about 500 plaintiffs — an average of $1.2 million to $1.3 million per person. The settlement also calls for the release of confidential priest personnel files after review by a judge assigned to oversee the litigation, the sources said.

This settlement is five years in the making, and I can only hope it will be looked back upon as the moment the Catholic Church washed its hands of the sins of its fathers. *Updated: The settlement is $60 larger than originally reported, according to the LA Times. “It’s been a long, hard slog,” church attorney J. Michael Hennigan told the paper. “I’m delighted to see it’s come to a conclusion.”

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July 14, 2007 | 2:20 am

Can man sue God for his sins?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I have this uncomfortable feeling that I read this story in The Onion last month or remember it from some movie, but Faith Central says a Romanian paper is reporting that a man recently attempted to sue God for “fraud.” It seems he believed he entered into a contract with God to be freed from sin when he was baptized.  Here goes:

The Evenimuntul Zilei story is in Romanian, obviously, but so far our translation services reveal that Mircea Pavel (a convicted murderer)  brought charges against “the defendant God, who lives in the heavens and is represented in Romania by the Orthodox Church ... At my christening, I made a deal with the defendant aimed at freeing me from evil. But the latter has not respected that agreement until now, although he received from me various assets and numerous prayers” Pavel wrote.

The court dismissed the case, ruling that “God is not subject to law and does not have an address.”

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July 13, 2007 | 10:12 pm

Hindu prayer in Senate an ‘abomination’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Really? This is what some Christians consider effective evangelism?

WASHINGTON (Reuters)—Three protesters disrupted a prayer by a Hindu chaplain Thursday at the opening of a Senate hearing, calling it an abomination and shouting slogans about Jesus Christ.

It was the first time the daily prayer that opens Senate proceedings was said by a Hindu chaplain.

Capitol police said two women and one man were arrested and charged with causing a disruption in the public gallery of the Senate. The three started shouting when guest Chaplain Rajan Zed, a Hindu from Nevada, began his prayer.

They shouted “No Lord but Jesus Christ” and “There’s only one true God,” and used the term “abomination.”

Does anybody else notice parallels of language to that used by Islamic terrorists?

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July 13, 2007 | 10:40 am

It’s nice to be liked

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The God Blog got some unexpected praise this morning on the Times of London’s Faith Central blog—a place on Libby Purves’ guide to the 30 most influential religion blogs. Take a look and let me know which religion blogs you think are missing.

Faith Central is part of the Times’ religion Web package, which is pretty impressive: two blogs, links to religion news features, op-eds and obits, and a map of religiosity in the U.S. It also has this righteous photo of the late Pope John Paul II.

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July 13, 2007 | 4:07 am

Who is a half-Jew?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

There is a really interesting story in today’s Jewish Journal about the growing number of “half-Jews” fighting for acceptance. Jewish denominations differ on conversion requirements and whether the Jewish lineage comes from the mother or father, but each agrees that there is no such thing as a half-Jew—either you are or you aren’t.

You can’t have two identities, they say. But what about Ms. Cohen and the many like her?

Georgiana Cohen, a 27-year-old Web content specialist in Somerville, Mass., was raised by a non-Jewish mother but spent five years at the Donna Klein Jewish Academy in Boca Raton, Fla. That experience, she says, “legitimized a last name I carried around like a fake ID.”

The split between life at home and at school was stark, she recalls.

“My childhood was all Christmas trees and Easter candy,” Cohen says. “Meanwhile, back in Boca, I sang folk songs like ‘Jerusalem of Gold,’ led weekly minyan services with my best friend and captured Hebrew spelling bee trophies.”

She refers to herself now, somewhat flippantly, as “half-Jewish and half ‘fill-in-the-blank.’ “

The broader question—Who is a Jew?—is one of the most vexing for world Jewry and me personally. Both my grandmothers were Jewish and so was one grandfather; I look like a Jew, walk like a Jew and quack like a Jew—must be a duck—but I believe in Christianity, which is anathema to Judaism. So am I a Jew?

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July 12, 2007 | 3:34 pm

Anti-Semitism in a familiar place: Poland

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Last month, my colleague, Jane Ulman, reported on the rebirth of Jewish life in Poland, the place to where 60 percent of all Jews can trace their ancestry, the place where 90 percent of the country’s 3.3 million Jews had been murdered in little more than a year. Poland was making a comeback.

Many Jews still view Poland as the land of pogroms, persecution and prejudice; a terminally anti-Semitic and blood-drenched country where 3 million Jews were mercilessly murdered during World War II; a land dotted with death camps, desecrated cemeteries and deserted synagogues. What most Jews don’t know is that Poland has changed radically over the past couple of decades, and these days, it is reaching out to Israel and to Jews —and not just socially, either. ...

“Poland is the most pro-Israeli country in the world,” said Jaroslaw Nowak, deputy to Lodz Mayor Kropiwnicki in charge of relations with Israel and the Diaspora.

But Radio Maryja head Father Tadeusz Rydzyk’s recent rant seems to be serving as a setback. The Catholic priest, according to the Jerusalem Post, “accused the Jews of greed in a potential government compensation deal on confiscated property, and denounced Polish President Lech Kaczynski as a ‘fraudster who is in the pockets of the Jewish lobby.’”

The ADL obviously branded Rydzyk an anti-Semite. Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said: “He is sort of a Goebbels with a collar.”

But then Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, snapped back at Hier.

“If Rydzyk is Goebels, who is Hitler? Does Rabbi Hier really believe that the goal of the Catholic Church is to rid the world of Jews? Over one million Poles were murdered by the Nazis along with three million Jews. The analogy is uncalled for and the rabbi owes an apology for having made it for many of the same reason that he demanded one from Rydzyk.”

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