Church's "Emphasis on Punishment" Alienating Euro Catholics
 

     In Elaine Sciolino's Tuesday filing from Paris, "Europeans Fast Falling Away From Church," she suggests the Catholic Church needs to get with the times and stop with all the preaching about sin if it wants to retain a hold among European Catholics.

     She quotes an editor of a Catholic monthly magazine in Germany saying of Europeans: "They do not want to be evangelized. That is why the pope failed to make the church more attractive."

     Her own thoughts run along the same lines: "Part of the problem is the church's emphasis on punishment and sin rather than on inclusion and community. On the trip to France in 1980, early in his tenure, for example, Pope John Paul referred to the country by its historic title and asked, 'Eldest daughter of the church, what have you done with your baptism?' That approach, which some here dismiss as paternalistic, alienates many of Europe's Catholics, who insist that it is the church's leaders -- not the faithful -- who must change." As if the faithful were entitled to alter church doctrine.

     Then Sciolino quotes a former head of a "Catholic reform movement" who doesn't want the church imposing truth: "'They still think they have the truth and that their truth must be imposed on everyone,' said Didier Vanhoutte, former president of the Fédération des Reseaux du Parvis, an umbrella organization of 41 Catholic reform movements across Europe. 'They haven't accepted the limits of their power. They have to get closer to the people by accepting a certain degree of poverty and, certainly, humility.'"

For the rest of Sciolino, click here:

So, Is It Easy Being a Gay Republican?
 

     A Sunday Week in Review story by Patrick Healy ("Gay Republicans Soldier On, One Skirmish at a Time") begins: "Being a gay Republican has never been easy. But it seems to grow more complicated with every passing marriage. Just over a week ago, a well-connected Republican strategist, Arthur J. Finkelstein, acknowledged that he had wed his partner of 40 years. Mr. Finkelstein guards his private life carefully (the wedding was in December), but the disclosure immediately found its way into the public debate about same-sex marriage and about the isolation of married gays in a party whose leaders want to outlaw their unions."

     Healy gives the Republican Party some ironic props for its past tolerance, but claims things have changed: "It was the growing political power of the Christian right, starting in the 1970's, followed by AIDS and Ronald Reagan's slow acknowledgment of it, that spurred gays to turn to the Democrats. Republicans also faced the reality of gays in their party, as AIDS drove them to the surface."

     Healy apparently liked his first line so much he repeats it at the end: "Still, it's not always easy being a gay Republican. Last fall, the Democratic presidential ticket of John Kerry and John Edwards made a reference to the fact that Mary Cheney, a daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney who worked on his campaign, is a lesbian -- a move that, depending on your point of view, was meant to roil conservatives or to render sexuality nonpartisan."

For the rest of Healy, click here:

In Foreign Aid, U.S. "Largest Donor," Yet "Lags in Giving"
 

     A misleading headline tops a chart accompanying Celia Dugger's Monday piece on the amount of government giving to developing countries.

     The figures, based on statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, are arranged by giving as a percentage of national income to bolster the paper's chart headline: "Compared With Others, U.S. Lags in Giving."

     But the underlying caption to the chart, though also biased, does hint that the headline is misbegotten: "Although the largest donor in volume terms, the United States is now near the bottom of the list of countries when giving is measured by percent of gross national income." So America donates more than any other country, yet somehow "lags" in giving? The purpose of this strange formulation (which the Times has used before), other than to portray America inaccurately as a global skinflint, is left unexplained by the Times.