Experts say the historian may be reading too much into the markings, and they stand by carbon-dating that points to the shroud being a medieval forgery.

Barbara Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, says in a new book that she used computer-enhanced images of the shroud to decipher faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic scattered across the cloth.

She asserts that the words include the name "(J)esu(s) Nazarene" - or Jesus of Nazareth - in Greek. That, she said, proves the text could not be of medieval origin because no Christian at the time, even a forger, would have mentioned Jesus without referring to his divinity. Failing to do so would risk being branded a heretic.

"Even someone intent on forging a relic would have had all the reasons to place the signs of divinity on this object," Frale said Friday. "Had we found 'Christ' or the 'Son of God' we could have considered it a hoax, or a devotional inscription."

The shroud bears the figure of a crucified man, complete with blood seeping from his hands and feet, and believers say Christ's image was recorded on the linen's fibers at the time of his resurrection.

The fragile artifact, owned by the Vatican, is kept locked in a protective chamber in a Turin cathedral and is rarely shown. Measuring 13 feet (four meters) long and three feet (one meter) wide, the shroud has suffered severe damage through the centuries, including from fire.

The Catholic Church makes no claims about the cloth's authenticity, but says it is a powerful symbol of Christ's suffering.

There has been strong debate about it in the scientific community.

Skeptics point out that radiocarbon dating conducted on the cloth in 1988 determined it was made in the 13th or 14th century.

But Raymond Rogers of Los Alamos National Laboratory said in 2005 that the tested threads came from patches used to repair the shroud after a fire. Rogers, who died shortly after publishing his findings, calculated it is 1,300 to 3,000 years old and could easily date from Jesus' era.

Another study, by the Hebrew University, concluded that pollen and plant images on the shroud showed it originated in the area around Jerusalem sometime before the eighth century.

While faint letters scattered around the face on the shroud were seen decades ago, serious researchers dismissed them, due to the results of the radiocarbon dating test, Frale told The Associated Press.

But when she cut out the words from enhanced photos of the shroud and showed them to experts, they concurred the writing style was typical of the Middle East in the first century - Jesus' time.

She believes the text was written on a document by a clerk and glued to the shroud over the face so the body could be identified by relatives and buried properly. Metals in the ink used at the time may have allowed the writing to transfer to the linen, Frale said.

She said she counted at least 11 words in her study of enhanced images produced by French scientists in a 1994 study. The words are fragmented and scattered on and around the image's head, crisscrossing the cloth vertically and horizontally. One short sequence of Aramaic letters has not been fully translated. Another fragment in Greek - "iber" - may refer to Emperor Tiberius, who reigned at the time of Jesus' crucifixion, Frale said.

She said the text also partially confirms the Gospels' account of Jesus' final moments. A fragment in Greek that can be read as "removed at the ninth hour" may refer to Christ's time of death reported in the holy texts, she said.

In her book "The Shroud of Jesus Nazarene," published in Italian, Frale reconstructs from the lettering on the shroud what she believes Jesus' death certificate said: "Jesus Nazarene. Found (guilty of inciting the people to revolt). Put to death in the year 16 of Tiberius. Taken down at the ninth hour."

She said the text then stipulates the body will returned to relatives after a year.

Frale said her research was done without the support of the Vatican.

"I tried to be objective and leave religious issues aside," Frale told the AP. "What I studied was an ancient document that certifies the execution of a man, in a specific time and place."

Frale's work usually focuses on medieval documents. She is noted for research on the order of the Knights Templar and her discovery of unpublished documents on the group in the Vatican's archives.

Earlier this year, she published a study saying the Templars once had the shroud in their possession. That raised eyebrows because the order was abolished in the early 14th century and the shroud is first recorded in history around 1360 in the hands of a French knight.

Her latest book on the shroud raised even more doubts among some experts.

On one hand, it is true that a medieval forger would label the object with Christ's name, as were all relics produced at the time, said Antonio Lombatti, a church historian who has written about the shroud. The problem is that there are no inscriptions to be seen in the first place.

"People work on grainy photos and think they see things," Lombatti told the AP. "It's all the result of imagination and computer software. ... If you look at a photo of the shroud, there's a lot of contrast between light and dark, but there are no letters."

Further criticizing Frale's work, Lombatti said that artifacts bearing Greek and Aramaic texts were found in Jewish burials from the first century, but the use of Latin is unheard of.

He also rejected the idea that authorities would officially return the body of a crucified man to relatives after filling out some paperwork. Victims of that form of execution used by the Romans would usually be left on the cross or were disposed of in a dump to add to its deterrent.

Lombatti said "the message was that you won't even have a tomb to cry over."

Another shroud expert, Gian Marco Rinaldi, said that even scientists who believe in the relic's authenticity have dismissed as unreliable the images on which Frale's study was based.

"These computer enhancements increase contrast in an unrealistic way to bring out these signs," he said. "You can find them all over the shroud, not just near the head, and then with a bit of imagination, you see letters."

Unusual sightings in the shroud are common and are often proved false, said Luigi Garlaschelli, a professor of chemistry at the University of Pavia. He recently led a team of experts that reproduced the shroud using materials and methods available in the 14th century - proof, they said, that it could have been made by a human hand in the Middle Ages.

Decades ago, entire studies were published on coins purportedly seen on Jesus' closed eyes, but when high-definition images were taken during a 2002 restoration, the artifacts were nowhere to be seen and the theory was dropped, Garlaschelli said.

He said any theory about ink and metals would have to be checked by analysis of the shroud itself.

The last public display of the shroud was in 2000, when more than 1 million people turned up to see it. The next is scheduled for 2010, and Pope Benedict XVI has been asked to visit it.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

A top Obama administration official is praising the new Senate health bill's attempt to find a compromise on abortion coverage - even as an official of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says Sen. Harry Reid's bill is the worst he's seen so far on the divisive issue.

The bishops were instrumental in getting tough anti-abortion language adopted by the House, forcing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to accept restrictions that outraged liberals as the price for passing the Democratic health care bill.

Reid, D-Nev., now faces a similar choice: Ultimately, he will need the votes of a handful of Democratic senators who oppose abortion to get his bill through. Republicans hoping to block the health bill in the Senate are relishing the Democrats' predicament.

"Obviously, it's a problem (for Reid)," Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., the No. 2 Republican, said Friday. He said there's been an understanding in Congress that federal funds will not be used to pay for abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. "What this legislation does is move that fulcrum to the left," Kyl said.

Reid has steered the Senate bill in a direction that abortion-rights supporters can live with: allowing coverage for abortion in federally subsidized health care plans, provided that beneficiaries' own premiums are used to pay for the procedure. But abortion opponents say his compromise would gut current federal restrictions on abortion funding.

Despite criticism, Reid is expected to prevail on an initial Senate showdown set for Saturday night. He needs a 60-vote majority to advance the health bill toward full debate. It's during that debate - expected to begin after Thanksgiving and last for weeks - that the battle over abortion will be joined. Reid will need the votes of anti-abortion Democrats to clear other 60-vote hurdles before the Senate can take final action.

At the White House, health reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle praised Reid's effort to find a compromise on abortion.

"It was carefully worked through by the leader, who cares a lot about making sure this maintains the status quo on abortion policy," DeParle told reporters on Thursday. Obama has said he wants the bill to remain neutral on abortion, and DeParle said Reid struck just the right balance.

But Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the bishops' conference Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, said Reid's "is actually the worst bill" on life issues.

He called it completely unacceptable, adding that "to say this reflects current law is ridiculous."

The bill would forbid including abortion coverage as a required medical benefit. However, it would allow a new government insurance plan to cover abortions and let private insurers that receive federal subsidies offer plans that include abortion coverage.

In all cases, the money to pay for abortions would have to come from premiums paid by beneficiaries themselves, kept strictly separate from federal subsidy dollars. Government funds could be used for abortions only in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother - reflecting a current law known as the Hyde amendment.

The Hyde amendment restrictions apply to Medicaid, military health care and the federal employee health plan. Many states provide abortion coverage to low-income Medicaid beneficiaries, but they must do so separately with their own funds.

Abortion opponents say Reid's bill circumvents Hyde. For example, they say that any funds a government insurance plan would use to pay for abortion would be federal funds by definition - even if the money comes from premiums paid by beneficiaries.

"All the money the government has starts out being private money," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for National Right to Life. "Once the government has them, they're federal funds."

The restrictive language passed by the House would forbid any health plan that receives federal subsidies from paying for abortions, except as allowed by the Hyde amendment. Women would have to purchase separate coverage for abortion services.

Abortion rights supporters say that fencing off government funds from private premiums would achieve the same goal, without forcing women to get special coverage for a legal medical procedure now routinely included in many private health insurance plans.

Associated Press Special Correspondent David Espo contributed to this report.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Evidence presented at a bankruptcy hearing Thursday indicated that Annamalai Annamalai, who goes by the title Dr. Commander Selvam, has been funneling profits from his temple on Brook Hollow Parkway in Norcross into other business entities he controls.

A trustee appointed to investigate the finances of the Hindu Temple of Georgia earlier this month found evidence that Annamalai has used temple funds as a personal piggy bank.

Financial records show Annamalai has used temple funds to pay the mortgage on his million-dollar mansion in Duluth, loans on personal Lexus and Mercedes vehicles, and credit card bills, said David Crumpton, an accountant and certified fraud examiner employed by the trustee to help unravel the temple's finances.

"There are certainly indications that money was used improperly by Mr. Annamalai for personal purposes ... which suggests he is taking money from a source other than his salary from the Hindu Temple of Georgia," Crumpton said.

Bankruptcy trustee Lloyd Whitaker said he asked a bank to drill open two safety deposit boxes belonging to temple priests. They contained a small trove of jewelry, half-ounce gold bars and stock certificates. Whitaker said he did not yet know the value of the items.

Federal immigration officials have notified Annamalai, a native of India, that they intend to revoke his authority to remain in the country. The IRS also has a criminal investigation pending against him.

Brent Sherota, a lawyer for the temple, argued, "There is no direct evidence to support wrongdoing or to support fear he [Annamalai] is a flight risk."

Sherota asked a judge to lift what he called an unnecessarily burdensome freeze on temple accounts.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James E. Massey said a restraining order preventing temple employees from accessing funds and removing or destroying any property should stay in place for 10 more days. A new hearing was scheduled for Nov. 30. The temple has been advertised for a December foreclosure, but the judge must give final approval before the sale is allowed to proceed.

Massey said he was concerned about the temple's failure to hand over financial documents and apparent attempts by Annamalai to divert profits to an alter-ego entity, the Hindu Temple of the High Desert.

"Does that evidence show Mr. Annamalai could be accused of committing fraud? No," Massey said. "But there's a lot of smoke. And where there's smoke, there's fire, usually."

Copyright 2009 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Less than two months later, on Wednesday (Nov. 19) Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Renewal) announced that indeed such a body "will likely be necessary."

"What happened was the idea of a discussion for a year became kind of scary for people who want to leave now," said the Rev. David Baer, a CORE spokesman and pastor of an ELCA church in Whitewood, S.D.

Baer said his own church will vote this weekend on whether to join CORE, which he estimates counts around 700 congregations as members.

CORE said no "firm decisions" have been made about how the new church body will be structured; recommendations will be released in February. "The working committee is just beginning their work," Baer said. "What we've done is paint a little picture of what a church body will look like."

Conservative Lutherans have been distressed since the ELCA's Churchwide Assembly voted in August to allow gays and lesbians in committed, same-sex relationships to be ordained as clergy. The assembly also voted to allow congregations to recognize and support such relationships.

"The vote on sexuality opened the eyes of many to how far the ELCA has moved from biblical teaching," the Rev. Paull Spring, CORE's chair, said in a statement Wednesday.

ELCA spokesman John Brooks said CORE's announcement was expected.

"We are staying focused on our clear priorities and clear mission. More than 10,000 congregations that want to be part of that mission."

Five congregations have taken the two votes necessary to leave the ELCA since the Churchwide Assembly, Brooks said. The ELCA has approximately 4.6 million members spread across 10,300 congregations.

Eighty-seven congregations have taken the first vote, and 28 of those did not attain the two-thirds majority required to leave the denomination, Brooks said.

"That two-thirds hurdle is a big hurdle for some congregations," Baer said.

By Daniel Burke
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

That's one of the questions being asked in the investigation into the Nov. 5 rampage that left 13 people dead and dozens more injured.

According to reports, Hasan visited a nearby strip club in the weeks before the massacre and was frustrated by his inability to find a pious Muslim wife.

That's sparked a recurring, but still unresolved, debate on whether strict Islamic sexual mores in Muslim communities are contributing to a sense of hopelessness some say drives many young men into religious fanaticism and violence.

"All these men are so sexually deprived so much so that the sperm has gone to their brain, and they implode," wrote Ani Zonneveld, a female Muslim activist, on a Muslim online discussion forum which had taken up the issue.

Others are more skeptical about the claim, and say that if there's a relationship between religious fundamentalism and sexual repression or frustration, it is not unique to Muslims.

"I'm skeptical," said Kecia Ali, a religion professor at Boston University. People have tried to link Islamic extremism and sexual frustration for years, she said, but a causal relationship "was a bit of a stretch."

For many, however, the most perplexing question is why men who see themselves as devout Muslims engage in such un-Islamic behavior. Hasan, 39, is reported have visited the Starz strip club at least three times in weeks leading up to the shooting, spending up to six or seven hours at a time.

"He said he was a medic and that he was being deployed soon, but mostly he wanted to ask us questions," Jennifer Jenner, a stripper who Hasan paid $50 for a lap dance in the private room, told Foxnews.com.

"He was respectful."

Mohamed Atta and several other 9/11 hijackers had also visited strip clubs not long before the 2001 terrorist attacks. In his will, however, Atta demanded that women not come to his funeral and not visit his grave, and that whoever washed his body should wear gloves when washing his genitals. Scholars stress that among mainstream Muslims in America, women regularly participate in funerals, and probably don't consider the minutia that consumed Atta.

In his novel "Murder In Amsterdam," based on the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, British journalist Ian Buruma suggests that sexual frustration played a part in driving Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-born son of Moroccan immigrants, to murder Van Gogh in broad daylight in 2004.

As a teenager, Bouyeri smoked dope and chased Dutch women, but in his 20s, he faced bleak economic prospects, girl troubles, and his sister got a boyfriend. Bouyeri "felt dishonored, useless, and excluded," Buruma writes, but says Bouyeri found his source of power in radical Islam.

And one of the leading philosophical fathers of radical Islam, Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, was critical of the U.S. as an exchange student between 1948-50, especially of what he called the "animal-like mixing" of the sexes, even at church dances.

Many suicide bombers from Palestine and Iraq are said to be motivated by Islamic interpretations -- albeit highly disputed -- that 72 virgins await Muslim martyrs when they arrive in paradise.

The frustration that drives Muslim men to violence has at least as much to do with economic and social factors as it does with sexual troubles, observers say. High unemployment rates in many parts of the world complicate job prospects, where a steady income is a prerequisite to getting a wife, and where pre-marital sex can result in social ostracizing, jail, and whipping.

"If you can't get a job," Ali said, "you can't get a girlfriend."

Evidence, however, does not point to a link between sexual frustration and Islamic extremism, says Marc Sageman, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

"In fact, three-fourths of al-Qaida terrorists are married, and two-thirds of them have children (and many children at that)," he wrote in his 2004 essay, "Common Myths About al-Qaida Terrorism." "This apparent paradox is explained by the fact that they want many children to pursue jihad, while they sacrifice themselves for their cause and their comrades."

Another perplexing paradox is why men like Hasan and Atta, who see themselves as devout Muslims, go to strip clubs and engage in other un-Islamic behavior. "It's so inconsistent with the portrayals of these guys as pious Muslims," said Pamela Taylor, co-founder of Muslims for Progressive Values. "It doesn't make sense."

"There's a cultural double-standard," said Ali. Many Muslim men view both Western women and Muslim women as mainly sexual objects, but hold different standards for Western culture that they view as lost to vanity and promiscuity. "They don't expect their sisters to act like that."

While Zonneveld said she sees a connection between sexual frustration and violence, she emphasizes it is not unique to Islamic cultures.

"I say the route to violence is through intolerance, and it doesn't matter what religion or perspective you hold," she said. "You see that in the anarchists against capitalism, Jewish settlers against Palestinians, and of course these so-called Muslims."

By OMAR SACIRBEY
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

But the fact that he's chosen to host the meetings within a few miles of the Colorado Springs megachurch that dismissed him three years ago -- because of a sex and drug scandal involving a male escort -- has drawn stronger reactions.

"When you think of the ethics of that, it, to me, just defies explanation," said the Rev. H.B. London, who chaired Haggard's restoration committee and is vice president of church and clergy at Focus on the Family, also in Colorado Springs.

The Rev. Joe Trull, editor of the journal Christian Ethics Today, said starting a religious gathering near one's former church is "disrupting" and can lead to accusations of "sheep stealing" from a former flock.

"I don't think he should ever start a church or a group in the same community as his former church," said Trull, co-author of a book on ministerial ethics. "That's just verboten."

Ethicists say cases of clergy who've fallen from grace run the gamut, as does the appropriateness of their return to ministry. While some succeed and turn to work beyond the pulpit -- such as chaplaincies or writing opportunities -- others never are able to minister again.

Haggard's decision to start the prayer gatherings after the high-profile scandal has drawn support from the more than 100 attendees at his first prayer meeting on Nov. 12, as well as criticism from hundreds of responses to an online column by London that questioned his return. His former New Life Church said in a brief statement that it wished "him and his family only the best."

Ironically, Haggard's former church, which now attracts thousands of worshippers, was born out of small sessions he held in his basement nearly 25 years ago.

Both London and Michael Ware, who served on the board of overseers at New Life shortly after Haggard's dismissal, recalled that Haggard assured them he would never start a new church in Colorado Springs.

"It was the decision of the... overseers that Ted relocate to a city of his choice for his future and for his restoration," said Ware, senior pastor of Victory Church in Denver. "That was just what we recommended was the most healthy thing for him at that time."

Haggard, who also resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals in the wake of the scandal, did move away for a time and lived in Arizona. Last year, New Life announced that Haggard had ended a "spiritual restoration" process and had an "accountability relationship" with Pastor Tommy Barnett of Phoenix First Assembly, who had been on the restoration committee.

"It was pretty much of a mutual thing, because we saw that it wasn't really going anywhere," London said of the committee, which also included the Rev. Jack Hayford, former president of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. "We were concerned about his lack of submission to spiritual authority."

Attempts to reach Haggard for comment were unsuccessful. His home voicemail message includes an announcement about the time of the prayer meeting, and his Twitter account noted the name of the worship leader for the second session on Thursday (Nov. 19).

"This will be great!" he wrote.

The Gazette in Colorado Springs reported that Haggard says he now has a self-selected "accountability team" of five pastors from nondenominational evangelical churches, and has met with them for the past several months.

Glen Stassen, a professor of Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, said he believes forgiveness is a central aspect of recovery from a scandal like Haggard's, but so is an appropriate process including discipline.

"I am not a perfect person myself," said Stassen. "I'm really reluctant to be judgmental, but I really am in favor of restoration and disciplined processes and staying with them."

Stassen said it may be possible for people "who have done something far worse" than Haggard's transgressions to be restored.

"Will the person be honest in the future and will the person be faithful to others?" are questions that must be asked in circumstances like Haggard's, he said.

"`Sometimes we can do that, we can be restored, but sometimes if people don't go through the process, they may not."

London has had personal experience with that process, having watched the "failure" of his father, a prominent pastor who had an affair with his secretary but who went on to become a seminary president after a five-year period of restoration.

After the Haggard scandal, the younger London's ministry at Focus created a booklet on "Pastoral Restoration." He estimates that about half of those who enter such a process succeed.

But London wishes any attempts at future success by the former pastor had happened later, and elsewhere.

"We know it's a free country," he said. "We're just disappointed that it ended up this way."

Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

Still, some bishops gathered here for the final day of their semi-annual meeting said it is premature to say whether the church leaders who had asserted such a link were wrong.

Researchers from New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice on Tuesday (Nov. 17) presented initial findings from their multi-year study of the clergy sexual abuse scandal, which has resulted in some 14,000 claims of abuse and cost the U.S. Catholic Church about $2.6 billion in settlements since 1950.

The study, which is due to be completed next year, was commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops after the scandal overtook the U.S. church in 2002.

In a presentation to the bishops on Tuesday, Margaret Smith of John Jay said: "What we are suggesting is that the idea of sexual identity be separated from the problem of sexual abuse. At this point, we do not find a connection between homosexual identity and the increased likelihood of subsequent abuse from the data that we have right now."

Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of the gay Catholic group DignityUSA, called the report "very welcome news for gay people, gay priests, and our families and friends."

She said the John Jay report confirms other studies in concluding that sexual orientation is not connected to pedophilia or other sex crimes. "We hope that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church will finally accept this finding, since it has been borne out through their own study," Duddy-Burke said.

Some bishops, however, said it is too early to draw conclusions about the researchers' findings.

"I wouldn't put a lot of credence in it," said Archbishop John Nienstedt of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

After the abuse crisis rocked the church in 2002, Nienstedt helped lead a Vatican investigation of U.S. seminaries aimed at rooting out homosexuality, and served on a committee that drew up new sex abuse prevention policies for U.S. dioceses. He has also written that homosexual orientation is the result of childhood trauma.

Smith and her co-author, Karen Terry, stressed on Tuesday that access to young boys, rather than a homosexual orientation, was largely responsible for the high percentage of male abuse cases. "It's important to separate the sexual identity and the behavior," Terry said. "Someone can commit sexual acts that might be of a homosexual nature but not have a homosexual identity."

Still, Nienstedt said "a priest has to be accessible to all his people, and someone with a strong same-sex attraction would not be good to have in the pastoral care of people."

Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston said Wednesday that the researchers' conclusions still "need to be teased out."

"I think it needs to be explained better then it was," he said. "I think that's why you saw some of the bishops challenge (the researchers)."

In 2005, the Vatican issued new guidelines barring men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" from the priesthood. Bishop Edward Braxton of Belleville, Ill., asked Smith and Terry on Tuesday whether homosexuality should continue to be a factor in excluding some clergy candidates.

"If that exclusion were based on the fact that that person would be more probable than any other candidate to abuse, we do not find that at this time," Smith responded.

But the view that gay men are largely responsible for the sexual abuse scandal pervades the church hierarchy, said David Gibson, a Catholic journalist and author, and will not necessarily be overcome by the John Jay study.

"I think it will give cover to the bishops who want to continue to admit gay men into the seminary, as I think a majority of them want to do," Gibson said. "For those bishops dead-set against having any homosexuals in the priesthood, it won't make a difference."

David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said that "the fixation on gay priests" as the cause of the sex scandal "is part of a long litany of simplistic, wrong-headed solutions and scape-goating," by the Catholic hierarchy.

"Sadly, many Catholics have already reached that conclusion though, due to the bishops' spin," Clohessy said. "The real issue continues to be the bishops' bad behavior."

By DANIEL BURKE
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

The Center for Inquiry (CFI), an international advocacy group based in Amherst, N.Y., picked that brief phrase as the winner of its first-ever blasphemy contest.

Contestants were invited to submit slogans of 20 words or fewer that were critical of religious faith. The competition, launched to mark the inaugural International Blasphemy Day, attracted 1,000 entries from 650 participants, but also drew criticism from online commentators, some of whom called it offensive and suggested CFI was soliciting hate speech.

One CFI supporter even distanced himself from the contest on the organization's Web site, calling it "not dissimilar to the anti-Semitic cartoons of the Nazi era."

The top five contest winners are to receive T-shirts printed with their phrases; the first-place winner, Ken Peters of California, will also receive a coffee mug featuring his submission.

Ronald Lindsay, president and CEO of the atheist group, said the organization was overwhelmed by the response to the contest. Much of the criticism, he suggested, came from observers who may not have read the contest rules, which discouraged sexual jokes and other "crude entries."

While the contest might insult some people, Lindsay said the primary purpose was not to offend religious sensibilities. CFI argues that religious beliefs ought to be subject to examination and criticism, just like other beliefs.

"There are (religious) believers who will take offense but we think you can't let that limit free speech," said Lindsay.

Lindsay, who was one of the contest judges, said Peters' winning entry received extra points for brevity. "That particular slogan nicely summarizes what we're trying to do with our mission," he said. "We were not interested in things directed against religious believers, and we're not trying to humiliate believers."

CFI is considering other uses for the slogan, including advertising campaigns in the same vein as the atheist bus ads that ran recently in parts of England, Canada and the U.S.

By Leanne Larmondin
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission

While 27 percent of U.S. adults polled oppose religious charities applying for government funding to provide services to the needy, more than half -- 52 percent -- were against Muslim houses of worship being eligible for such money, reports the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The opposition to mosques seeking such funding increased slightly from 2001, when 46 percent were against it.

The only charities that received greater opposition were "groups that encourage religious conversion as part of the services they provide," whose eligibility for funding was opposed by 63 percent of respondents.

Overall, the survey conducted with the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that the faith-based initiative started by President Bush and continued by President Obama receives broad support from the public.

The results of the telephone survey results were based on a total nationwide sample of 4,013 adults and have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.0 percentage points.

By Adelle M. Banks
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission

"The recession has made the problem of hunger worse, and it has also made it more visible," said David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, a Christian anti-hunger group. "Increased public awareness and the administration's commitment gives me hope."

Households experiencing "food insecurity" jumped 3.5 percent in 2008, to 14.6 million, the largest one-year increase since the USDA began publishing data in 1995.

SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program provided by the USDA for low-income families, distributed benefits to more than 36 million people in August 2009, a 24 percent increase over the previous year.

Half of the people receiving SNAP assistance were children.

According to the USDA, 4.3 million more children were food insecure in 2008 than in 2007, bringing the number to 16.7 million. In many cases, children are protected from a change in their eating patterns, but both children and adults across 506,000 households experienced times of very low food security last year.

"Child hunger is not just a casualty of the recession. It was a problem before the recession, and unless we take the necessary steps, kids will continue to suffer after the economy recovers," said Beckmann.

By Angela Abbamonte
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

"This is not true, we are not threatening anything like that," Koby Bahar, spokesman for Intel Israel, told Religion News Service on Tuesday (Nov. 17).

On Saturday, an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 fervently religious Jews rallied outside Intel's Jerusalem factory to protest what they consider to be the company's desecration of the Sabbath.

The demonstration against Intel was one of the many protests organized in recent months by ultra-Orthodox rabbis over Sabbath violations in the city, most of them related to the operation of a municipal parking lot.

Bahar said his company's 24-year-old Jerusalem plant "is working in accordance with our business needs and Israeli law. When we need to work on Shabbat, then we work on Shabbat, too. We are not talking about a lot of workers, but I cannot give you exact numbers."

Israeli blue laws stipulate that non-vital businesses and services in the Jewish sector must be shuttered from sundown Friday through sundown Saturday, but the laws are rarely enforced. Exceptions are also permitted.

The spokesman noted that small groups of ultra-Orthodox men first stood outside the Jerusalem facility two weeks ago, "but it was not an actual demonstration."

Bahar said that Intel is now "in talks" with representatives of the ultra-Orthodox community. One option is the employment of non-Jews during the Sabbath, according to media reports.

"We hope to come to a solution, but we don't want to talk about what kind of solution. I want to emphasize that no one is forced to work on Shabbat," Bahar added.

By Michele Chabin
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

That, however, has never deterred tour operator Emad Elseidy, who has led Hajj pilgrimage groups for about 10 years. The 42-year-old Egyptian immigrant accepts -- almost embraces -- the possibility of getting sick during Hajj, but thinks fears about the H1N1 virus, or swine flu, are overblown.

"I'm expecting it. A basic cold, 80 percent of people get it. I call it the Mecca cough," said Elseidy, owner of the Washington-based American Hajj Union Inc., who added that H1N1 fears didn't keep him from selling out all of his 1,250 Hajj packages this year.

Not all Muslims, however, are taking H1N1 so casually.

Dunia Ramadan and her husband, Omar, never thought about postponing their Hajj, but they did get the H1N1 shot when they normally would not have.

"We weren't too worried about getting (H1N1), but I didn't want to get sick over there," said Dunia Ramadan, 26, of Upland, Calif. "You may not be able to complete your Hajj."

Some Hajj travel agents are reporting that many would-be pilgrims are postponing the sacred pilgrimage -- which is required at least once of all Muslims who are physically and financially able to travel -- because of flu concerns and tight finances.

"It's the virus, and it's the economy," said Mohammed Abdulwaheed, president of Caravan Travel Inc., in Edison, N.J. "This is the worst year in my history."

In recent years, Abdulwaheed has usually booked about 400 Hajj travel packages, which typically cost between $4,000 and $7,000. This year, he is taking fewer than 200 pilgrims. Those who are going, he added, have followed his recommendations to get a flu shot.

"We want everybody to come back healthy," he said.

H1N1 has killed more than 6,500 people globally, and could be especially contagious in an environment like the Hajj, which draws more than 2 million Muslims who share sleeping quarters, bathrooms, plates, cups, and crowd into ritual sites for several days.

For the Saudi Arabian government, which as "custodian" of Mecca's holy sites takes responsibility for pilgrims' health and safety, the swine flu presents the latest in a long line of Hajj-related health and safety worries.

"The Hajj is always a concern," said Nail Al-Jubeir, a spokesman for the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington. "When you have that many people, it's a problem. You're creating an incubator."

Hundreds of people die every year during Hajj from disease, heart attacks or even crowd stampedes. Respiratory diseases such as pneumonia and flu are most often the causes of Hajj hospital admissions, according to a 2006 study by Saudi physicians published in the Lancet medical journal.

Doctors in Marseille, France, which has a significant Muslim population, reported in a letter published this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that 60 percent of the city's returning pilgrims in 2006 came back with some kind of respiratory problem. Other common dangers include tuberculosis, diarrhea, and hepatitis B and C.

Meningitis killed more than 100 pilgrims during outbreaks in 2000 and 2001.

The Saudis, who pride themselves on a top-tier medical system built with oil wealth, prepare in multiple ways. In recent years, they have deployed about 10,000 physicians, nurses and other medical workers in stations set up along the Hajj circuit. Airports have thermal sensors to detect passengers with high fevers. Saudi Arabia now requires all pilgrims to have certificates of vaccination against meningitis; pilgrims from certain countries need vaccinations against yellow fever.

In September, the Saudis announced they will require an oral polio vaccine on arrival to guard against viruses carried by pilgrims from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nigeria. Saudis have also urged -- but not mandated -- seniors and children to stay home this year. Many elderly pilgrims, however, especially from Muslim countries where Hajj waiting lists can stretch for decades, disregard health concerns.

"They've been looking forward to this trip for a long time, and they may not have a chance next year," said Al-Jubeir.

No matter how well the Saudis prepare for an outbreak, experts say the most important precautions will have to be undertaken by pilgrims themselves.

For years, medical professionals have urged pilgrims to exercise and get fit ahead of the trip, and to bring face masks, hand sanitizer, cold medicine, and vitamins. In 2002, the World Muslim League in Mecca issued a fatwa allowing the use of alcohol-based hand sanitizers even though alcohol is forbidden in Islam.

"There are many people who don't follow these recommendations, because of their lack of education or lack of sophistication," said Joan Pitcher, the chief operating officer at the Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute in Pennsylvania, and a Muslim convert. With a shortage of H1N1 vaccine, she has advised pilgrims to get shots for both the seasonal flu and bacterial pneumonia.

"You have to count on pilgrims to do these things to protect themselves," she said.

By OMAR SACIRBEY c. 2009 Religion News Service
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

Archbishop Hilarion, who oversees external relations for the Russian Orthodox Church, said ties with the Evangelical Church of Germany are threatened by the recent election of Bishop Margot Kassmann, a Lutheran, as chairwoman of the German church.

Hilarion said on Nov. 11 that the 50th anniversary of dialogue between the churches could also be the end of relations.

"I think that the 50th anniversary of this dialogue will become simultaneously the end of this dialogue, because I don't see the possibility of it continuing now in those forms in which it existed,"

Hilarion said. "And one of the reasons for this is that a woman has become the head of this church."

"We don't recognize the ordination of women; we don't recognize female bishops, but we were ready not to close our eyes to this, but to continue dialogue, even though this wave of ordination of women existed in the Lutheran Church in recent years," he said.

"But when a woman becomes the head of a church, this results in even simple questions of protocol," said Hilarion. "How will the Patriarch address her and meet with her? Will he congratulate her on holidays?

Will he address her as bishop, or how?"

In a reply sent to Russian Patriarch Kirill I, Kassman and Bishop Martin Schindehutte, who heads the German church's foreign relations department, expressed "surprise and incomprehension" over "inappropriate" statements by leaders of the Russian church.

Kassmann and Schindehutte said different views about the ministry of women in churches had previously been "no barrier to fruitful inter-church relations on a bilateral and multilateral level."

By Sophia Kishkovsky
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

In his address that opened the semi-annual meeting of the U.S.

Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago implored 300 fellow bishops to "look for ways to strengthen church unity."

"Since everything and everyone in Catholic communion is truly inter-related," George said, "... an insistence on complete independence from the bishop renders a person or institution sectarian, less than fully Catholic."

In particular, church leaders have begun discussing ways to "strengthen our relationships" with Catholic universities, media "claiming the right to be a voice in the church," and organizations that work under Catholic auspices, George said.

"The faithful need the bishops in order to be Catholic, and the bishops need the faithful in order to be Catholic pastors," said George, the president of the bishops conference.

George's address comes as the nation's 67 million Catholics are sharply divided on a number of religious and political issues, including same-sex marriage, health care, and abortion, and as the church comes under criticism -- sometimes from its own members -- for its uncompromising stance on those issues.

This month, a scion of the nation's most prominent Catholic family, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., has been engaged in a war of words with his bishop, Thomas Tobin of Providence, over abortion and health care.

Kennedy's support for abortion rights "is unacceptable to the church and ... absolutely diminishes your communion with the church," Tobin wrote in a public letter to Kennedy.

Kennedy has insisted that "the fact that I disagree with the hierarchy of the church on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic."

Meanwhile, the Archdiocese of Washington has threatened to cancel its multi-million-dollar social service contracts in Washington if the city legalizes gay marriage. Some members of Congress, including Catholics, have questioned the bishops' influential role in the health care reform legislation on the Hill.

Jon O'Brien, president of the group Catholics for Choice, said in a statement that "conservatives, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, have been presenting their own views as an accurate representation of all U.S. Catholics." But surveys show a significant gap between the abortion views of bishops and a majority of lay Catholics, O'Brien said.

George defended the bishops' political involvement, which includes a successful push for an anti-abortion amendment in the health care reform bill the House passed Nov. 7.

"It is not for us, as bishops, to speak to a particular means of delivering health care," George said Monday. "It is our responsibility, however, to insist, as a moral voice concerned with human solidarity, that everyone should be cared for, and that no one should be deliberately killed."

The bishops have shown no signs of withdrawing from debate on controversial public issues. At their meeting here this week, bishops are expected to approve a statement on marriage that strongly condemns efforts to legalize same-sex unions; to reinforce the church's ban on many forms of contraception and reproductive technologies; and to insist that health care workers are obligated to provide most severely brain-damaged patients with food and water.

"To limit our teaching or governing to what the state is not interested in would be to betray both the Constitution of our country and, much more importantly, the Lord himself," George said.

George acknowledged that the Catholic hierarchy's moral authority has been tarnished by the clergy sex abuse scandal that cost the church more than $2.6 billion since 1950. But, he said "the sinfulness of churchmen cannot be allowed to discredit the truth of Catholic teaching or to destroy the relationships that create ecclesial communion."

"The proper response to a crisis of governance," George said, "is not no governance but effective governance."

Peter Isely of Milwaukee, a board member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), accused the bishops of focusing on politics while largely ignoring lingering problems from the abuse scandal.

"The problem isn't `no governance,' it's the same governance," Isely said in a statement. "The same secretive, rigid, all-male monarchy that caused the crisis and causes the continued coverup is still in place.

Many of the same men who hid predators and evidence and crimes are still bishops today."

By DANIEL BURKE
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

The Jews crowning this year's "Forward 50" boast a range of achievements: Jerry Silverman, president of the Jewish Federations of North America; Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren; Sara Hurwitz, pioneering Orthodox female religious leader; and film directors Joel and Ethan Coen.

"We're seeing impact from new and different places, or from the same places but different faces," said Jane Eisner, Forward editor, who noted that only director Stephen Spielberg remains from the original list, published in 1994.

Her staff spent several months compiling and debating names, grouping them under categories of Activism, Community, Media & Culture, Politics, Religion, Scandal and Sports. Thirteen women made the cut, including Alysa Stanton, the first black Jewish female rabbi, ordained in June. About two dozen nominations came from readers, resulting in the inclusion of J. Shawn Landres, a leader in the post-denominational Jewish movement.

While last year's controversial entries stemmed from the immigration raid on the Agriprocessors kosher meat plant in Iowa, this year's new "Scandal" category featured disgraced businessmen on the secular stage: Solomon Dwek, Bernard Madoff and J. Ezra Merkin.

"We weren't trying to be scandalous, but (including them) was kind of unavoidable," Eisner said. "But, we heavily balanced the list towards those people who we really feel we want to admire and emulate. It's mostly a way of recognizing and celebrating leadership and innovation, and we hope it will continue to emphasize people that we are proud of."

The complete list can be viewed at www.forward.com.

By Nicole Neroulias
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.