He "was an important, and at the same time, controversial man of the church, who played a critical role in gaining 'more spaces' so that the Catholic Church in Cuba could exercise her mission of evangelisation within a Marxist nation," says one of Ortega's frequent visitors, Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami.

"He was key to receiving the visit of three popes and negotiating the freedom of political prisoners. May he rest in peace."

Ortega (82), who was Havana's retired archbishop, died on 26 July.

Many visitors, including various US bishops, visited and prayed by his bedside during his last days.

Wenski, who was among them, says Ortega was "a dedicated man of the church and an exemplary Cuban".

After Fidel Castro's communist revolution in 1959, he was jailed for eight months as a suspected opponent of the regime.

He was a leading spokesman for Cuban Catholics on national and international issues during his 35 years as archbishop.

Like popes St John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis, Ortega took the view that the US economic blockade was keeping thousands of people poor while doing little to pressure the Cuban government to expand freedoms and human rights.

As archbishop, he hand-delivered private messages from Pope Francis to then US president Barack Obama and Fidel Castro's brother and successor, Raul Castro, urging them to put aside Cold War-era mistrust and forge a new relationship between the United States and Cuba.

He also used every opportunity possible to plead with the US government to end the blockade. Eventually political tensions thawed and more contact between Cuba and the US recommenced.

Ortega also negotiated with the government for church buildings to be restored and reopened, and this year saw a new Catholic church opened - the first to be built since 1959.

Not everyone appreciated Ortega however.

Some Cubans in exile say he didn't do enough to denounce the island's government.

Some even singled out the date of his death - on the anniversary of an important rebellion that led to the overthrow of Cuba's former government - as proof that he was favourable to the government.

However, Puerto Rico's Archbishop Roberto Gonzalez Nieves says although Ortega was "misunderstood" by Cubans in exile, "he was much loved by the faithful Catholics in Cuba."

Source

• National Catholic Reporter
• National Catholic Reporter
• CNN
• Image: Crux Now

He is defending his refusal to speak about "Islamic terrorism".

He wants us to "make sure that we do not lump these murderers into the billion Muslims that exist around the world who are peaceful ... responsible ... fellow troops and police officers and fire fighters and teachers and neighbors and friends."

He compared the term "Islamic terrorism" with the idea of "Christian" crimes.

"If you had an organization ... killing and blowing people up and said, 'We're on the vanguard of Christianity.'

"As a Christian, I'm not going to let them claim my religion and say, 'You're killing for Christ.' I would say that's ridiculous."

Obama made these remarks when a bereaved mother asked him if would use the term "Islamic terrorism" to describe the attack that killed her son.

"My son gave his life for acts of terrorism," she said.

"Do you still believe that the acts of terrorism are done for the self-proclaimed Islamic religious motive?

"And if you do, why do you still refuse to use the term ... Islamic terrorist?"

Besides explaining the reasons he refuses to accuse Muslims in general with terrorist behaviour he added "there's no religious rationale that would justify in any way any of the things that they [the terrorists] do."

Source

• Israel Hayom
• Image: thepeak.tv

Blair made this observation in November 2002, four months before the invasion of Iraq, when he invited six experts to Downing Street to brief him on the likely consequences of the war.

The experts warned that Iraq was a complicated place, riven by deep communal enmities, which Saddam had dominated for over thirty-five years.

Destroying the regime would leave a vacuum; the country could be shaken by Sunni rebellion and might well descend into civil war.

These dangers left the Prime Minister unmoved.

What mattered was Saddam's moral iniquity.

The divided society over which he ruled was irrelevant. Get rid of the tyrant and his regime, and the forces of good would prevail.

If Saddam was uniquely evil twelve years ago, we have it on the authority of our leaders that ISIS is uniquely evil today.

Until it swept into Iraq a few months ago, the jihadist group was just one of several that had benefited from the campaign being waged by Western governments and their authoritarian allies in the Gulf in support of the Syrian opposition's struggle to overthrow Bashar al-Assad.

Since then ISIS has been denounced continuously and with increasing intensity; but there has been no change in the ruthless ferocity of the group, which has always practised what a radical Islamist theorist writing under the nameAbu Bakr Naji described in an internet handbook in 2006 as "the management of savagery." Continue reading

• John Gray in ABC Religion & Ethics

John Gray is formerly Emeritus Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and the author of many books.

Nina Pham, a nurse from Texas, was the first person to contract the virus within the United States.

This is believed to have happened when she was nursing Thomas Duncan, who subsequently died.

Now declared free of Ebola after five negative test results, Ms Pham gave thanks to God and to all who prayed for her.

"I feel fortunate and blessed to be standing here today," Ms Pham said in a press conference on October24.

"I would first and foremost like to thank God, my family and friends. Throughout this ordeal, I have put my trust in God and my medical team."

Her friends have described Ms Pham as a devout Catholic.

She also thanked fellow survivor Dr Kent Brantly for donating his blood plasma for her treatment.

Ms Pham called his donation a "selfless act".

"I believe in the power of prayer because I know so many people all over the world have been praying for me," she continued.

"I join you in prayer now for the recovery of others."

Ms Pham thanked everyone who had been involved in her care, both in Texas and in Maryland at the National Institutes of Health.

Dr Anthony Fauci, from the National Institutes of Health, said it wasn't clear which treatment saved Ms Pham because they were all experimental.

Before returning to her "normal life" in Texas, Ms Pham received a bear hug from President Barack Obama in the Oval Office in Washington.

Ebola continues to devastate parts of west Africa.

The World Health Organisation said that nearly 5000 deaths had been reported as of October 19, but the true numbers could be as high as 15,000.

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• ABC
• Image: ABC

James Foley, 40, was the oldest of five children in a Catholic family in New Hampshire.

Working for the Global Post and AFP, he was kidnapped in Syria in 2012.

Commenting on his shocking killing, the Pope's senior communications advisor Greg Burke pointed to an article wrote describing Mr Foley's faith in captivity.

Mr Foley wrote for Marquette University, where he once studied, describing how his faith sustained him when he was previously kidnapped by pro-Gaddafi forces in Libya in 2011.

After being in captivity for 45 days, Mr Foley wrote: "I prayed my mom would know I was OK. I prayed I could communicate through some cosmic reach of the universe to her.

"I began to pray the Rosary. It was what my mother and grandmother would have prayed. I said 10 Hail Marys between each Our Father.

"It took a long time, almost an hour to count 100 Hail Marys off on my knuckles. And it helped to keep my mind focused.

"Clare (my colleague) and I prayed together out loud. It felt energising to speak our weaknesses and hopes together, as if in a conversation with God, rather than silently and alone."

He wrote that prayer enabled his inner freedom.

After the Islamic State posted the video of Mr Foley's murder online, his mother, Diane, wrote on the Free James Foley Facebook page: "We implore the kidnappers to spare the lives of the remaining hostages."

"Like Jim, they are innocents. They have no control over American government policy in Iraq, Syria or anywhere in the world.

"We thank Jim for all the joy he gave us. He was an extraordinary son, brother, journalist and person."

Mr Foley's family was visited by their parish priest on August 19, who left without speaking to reporters.

Islamic State has threatened to kill other kidnapped journalists unless the US stops airstrikes against their forces in Iraq.

US President Barack Obama said that "no just God" would stand for what the jihadists had done.

"ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day," he said.

Sources

• The Tablet
• Catholic Herald
• Marquette University
• Image: Marquette University

"He so quickly got us," said Andrew Lyke, a participant in the meeting who is now the director of the Chicago Archdiocese's Office for Black Catholics.

The group succeeded in inserting its priorities into the congress's plan for churches, Mr Lyke said, and "Barack Obama was key in helping us do that."

By the time of that session in the spring of 1987, Mr Obama — himself not Catholic — was already well known in Chicago's black Catholic circles.

He had arrived two years earlier to fill an organising position paid for by a church grant, and had spent his first months here surrounded by Catholic pastors and congregations.

In this often overlooked period of the president's life, he had a desk in a South Side parish and became steeped in the social justice wing of the church, which played a powerful role in his political formation.

On Thursday, Mr Obama met with Pope Francis at the Vatican after a three-decade divergence with the church.

By the late 1980s, the Catholic hierarchy had taken a conservative turn that de-emphasised social engagement and elevated the culture wars that would eventually cast Mr Obama as an abortion-supporting enemy. Continue reading.

Source: The New York Times

Image: Joe Wrinn, Harvard University/AP Photo

Black Protestants have been nearly twice as likely as other Christians to hear about the election, and nearly half have heard voting messages favouring incumbent Barack Obama.

Fewer white churchgoers have heard messages supporting a candidate. Those that did were more likely to favour challenger Mitt Romney.

Continue reading

Sources

• Michael Sean Winters in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: The Washington Times

Michael Sean Winters serves as a political correspondent at the National Catholic Reporter.

On June 17, Obama held a slight edge over Mitt Romney among Catholics (49-47 percent). Since then, Obama has surged ahead, and now leads 54-39 percent, according to a Pew poll conducted on Sept. 16.

The poll showed that among all registered voters, Obama leads Romney 51-42 percent.

A report by Religion News Service (RNS) said Obama and Romney are essentially tied among white Catholics, which some pollsters call the ultimate swing group.

Romney on Monday unveiled his Catholics for Romney Coalition. The Obama campaign also has a Catholic coalition.

During the last week of June to July 4, US Catholic bishops held what they dubbed as a "Fortnight for Freedom," with Masses, prayer groups and presentations in dioceses nationwide. The campaign was aimed against an Obama administration mandate that requires some religious institutions to provide cost-free contraception coverage to employees.

The RNS report quoted John C. Green, an expert on religion and politics at the University of Akron in Ohio, as saying that Obama's surge among Catholic voters does not mean the bishops' campaign was ineffective.

"It's not the issue that most middle-of-the-road Catholics are responding to," Green said. He said religious freedom is not the most salient issue for Catholics during an election dominated by economic concerns.

The margin of error for the September survey of Catholic voters is plus or minus 5.1 percentage points, according to Pew.

Sources

• RNS
• Huffington Post
• The Washington Post
• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: AP/Center for American Progress

For years, of course, American leadership has been dominated by white Anglo-Saxon protestants. According to the Times' chart, there was not a non-Protestant or non-white Speaker of the House until 1961. The Supreme Court was dominated by white Protestants until 1994, when for the first time five of the nine justices were non-Protestant or non-white. And while there have been candidates from various backgrounds (namely Catholic) for president and vice president for decades, the number of non-whites or non-Protestants who've actually held those two jobs are still very few: Charles Curtis, Herbert Hoover's vice president, was part Native American; John F. Kennedy was Catholic; Vice President Joe Biden is Catholic; and Barack Obama is African American. (Notably, this is the first year since 1964 that there has been a non-white or non-Protestant on the Republican party ticket.)

Some of these numbers, of course, are simply reflective of politics. George W. Bush, for instance, named three Supreme Court justices, all conservative Catholics, to their post. But surely, some of it is also a sign of progress that we as a country are more accepting of other faiths and other ethnicities. For the first time in history, none of the men at the top of either ticket, Democratic or Republican, are both white and Protestant. Read more

Sources

• Washington Post
• Image: MPRNews

Last week, Rush Limbaugh, popular voice of far-right politics, used his position on the airwaves to insult, label and pronounce on the sexual motivations of a young Georgetown law school student who testified on behalf of the coverage of contraceptive medicine in national health care insurance plans.

And he did it not once, but at least three times. It was not, obviously, a slip of the tongue. This was a personal attack of precise aim.

Then this week, on another subject but with a similar tone, students at Columbia University, Barnard College's sister school and one of the country's premier educational institutions, raged online at Newsweek's "The Daily Beast" about the unworthiness of the women of Barnard to have the honor of President Barack Obama as their graduation speaker. The insults hurled at Barnard, a woman's college since 1889 and a partner school of Columbia, were every bit as sexual and sexist, as degrading and as vehement as Limbaugh's.

At least Limbaugh didn't hide behind false screen names as did the respondents to the Barnard issue, who chose to be vile rather than accountable for their free speech.

Like Limbaugh, the students of Columbia — many of them women — who resent the fact that President Obama agreed to do the graduation address at Barnard rather than accept similar invitations to Columbia chose invective rather than analysis to register their reactions to the situation. They and the screaming respondents who answered their tirades with tirades of their own simply abandoned all pretense of intellectual development or rational response.

It is clear in both cases that "free speech" has reached a new low. The question is, Whose fault is that, really?

And the answer is that there are culprits aplenty, it seems. Read more

Sources

• Joan Chittister in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: MassLive.com

Aretha Franklin, poet Nikki Giovanni and President Barack Obama were among those who attended the more than four-hour ceremony. King's children and other leaders spoke before the president, invoking his "I Have a Dream" speech and calling upon a new generation to help fully realize that dream.

The crowd, some of whom came out as early as 5am (10am Sunday, NZ time), included people of all ages and races. Some women wore large Sunday hats for the occasion.

The president arrived late morning with his wife and two daughters, which drew loud cheers from those watching his entrance on large screens.

Cherry Hawkins travelled from Houston with her cousins and arrived at 6am to be part of the dedication. They postponed earlier plans to attend the August dedication, which was postponed because of Hurricane Irene.

"I wanted to do this for my kids and grandkids," Hawkins said. She expects the memorial will be in their history books someday. "They can say, 'Oh, my granny did that.'"

Hawkins, her cousin DeAndrea Cooper and Cooper's daughter Brittani Jones, 23, visited the King Memorial on Saturday after joining a march with the Rev. Al Sharpton to urge Congress to pass a jobs bill.

"You see his face in the memorial, and it's kind of an emotional moment," Cooper said. "It's beautiful. They did a wonderful job."

Actress Cicely Tyson said her contemporaries are passing the torch to a new generation and passed the microphone to 12-year-old Amandla Stenberg. The girl recalled learning about the civil rights movement in school and named four young girls killed in a 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Ala.

"As Dr King said at their funeral, 'They didn't live long lives, but they lived meaningful lives,'" Amandla said. "I plan to live a meaningful life, too."

About 1.5 million people are estimated to have visited the 10-metre-tall statue of King and the granite walls where 14 of his quotations are carved in stone. The memorial is the first on the National Mall honouring a black leader.

• Read more: www.stuff.co.nz
• Image: Bakersfield Now