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Orthodox Christians celebrate on Thursday the great (one of the twelve) feast of the Transfiguration of Christ, which is commonly called Yablochny Spas.
According to the Gospel, Jesus Christ told his disciples that He will have to go to Jerusalem, suffer a lot from the elders, high priests and scribes, be killed and rise from the dead on the third day.
"And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart,
"And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.
"And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him.
It was an Italian real estate agent who, three-quarters of a century ago, donated enough land in Copiague for the Our Lady of the Assumption parish, and who later invited others to settle in what he called "an Italian village, close to the sea with jobs, water, gas, a school and the railroad."
Thousands did, and for years, the burgeoning Roman Catholic church on Molloy Street and its clergymen named Bruno, Roberto, Privitera, Parascandola and Capobianco was a true reflection of the community.
But 75 years later, although the red brick church and its thin, weather-worn steeple remain, the clergy and its congregation have changed.
The Catholics for Kerry 04 website has been blasted by the Catholic League for referring to President George W. Bush as the Antichrist. Under the heading “President Bush?”, the website says “Antichrist?” and links to comments by Wayne Madsden, who says, ”George W. Bush’s blood lust, his repeated commitment to Christian beliefs and his constant references to ‘evil doers,’ in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations—the anti-Christ.”
Catholic League president William Donohue blasted the website saying, “This is the language of a demagogue, and it has no legitimate role to play in presidential politics.”
The Catholics for Kerry 04 website has refused to remove the controversial statement and link from its site. In a rebuttal to Donohue, the website’s managers defended their move, saying, “It is simply a point of view we considered important for Catholics to be aware of.”
When I heard that refrain in Sen. John F. Kerry's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, it reminded me of why I am a Democrat at heart. In my lifetime, the Democratic Party has stood consistently on the side of the poor, the weak, the vulnerable.
But I have not cast my vote for a Democratic presidential candidate in 12 years because the Democrats have refused to extend their protection to the weakest and most vulnerable — unborn children.
Given the terrible number of abortions that are allowed each year, each day in our country — "1.31 million pregnancies were terminated by abortion in the U.S." in 2000, the most recent statistics available, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute — we surely can do better. And Kerry should make just such a proposition part of his campaign. I am not suggesting that Kerry commit himself to overturning Roe vs. Wade — although I think it should be overturned. But I am suggesting that he challenge those who are considering abortion to "do better," and that he challenge the United States as a nation to "do better" by them.
Which brings me to Kerry's other rhetorical flourish: "Help is on the way." I am confident that the Democrats could create a policy that the Republican Party, for all of its pro-life rhetoric, has to my knowledge never offered. Kerry could offer a guarantee that any woman with an unwanted pregnancy would be assisted by the federal government, perhaps in league with faith-based initiatives, and that she would be granted the kind of support that would help her consider her options. That means financial aid, adoption counseling and, most important, should she decide to raise her child, continuing material support after the birth.
Kerry, who as a Catholic professes a personal antipathy toward abortion, must understand that this is the right thing to do. After all, the immediate effect of his moral leadership in this matter would save lives, just as surely as young Lt. Kerry saved Lt. James Rassman's life on that uncertain day on the Bay Hap River.
But Kerry should also understand that it could go a long way toward sealing a Democratic victory in November. Providing options and support systems that could help limit the number of abortions would appeal to the majority who believe that abortion should be avoided whenever possible. It could galvanize many undecided antiabortion voters who, like me, long to return to the Democratic Party. And in a time of discouraging polarization, such a stand could create common ground that most of us can agree upon: Abortions are a catastrophe in our culture, not just another lifestyle choice.
Mary Jo Bane, a public policy professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and the Department of Health and Human Services' assistant secretary for children and families during the Clinton administration, writes in a just-published essay that "we are all losing the opportunity to make important progress in limiting abortions." Kerry could, if he so chooses, live up to his rhetoric and lead our country to do better.
It's hard to miss Father Marcos Gonzalez, who wears an ankle-length black cassock every day, a garment most priests tossed out decades ago. But it's not just his clothes that bespeak an older, more traditional era of his Catholic Church.
When some priests spoke in favor of optional celibacy at a Los Angeles priest assembly last year - a position supported by most American Catholics today - Gonzalez booed in dissent. In premarital counseling, he tells couples to remain chaste until marriage, plunging into delicate territory some priests prefer to avoid. Gonzalez also believes that artificial birth control and homosexual sex are always a sin and opposes the ordination of women.
Such stances conform with Vatican doctrine, he says, but are at odds with many American priests and laypeople.
Yet Gonzalez, an associate pastor at St. Andrew's Church in Pasadena, Calif., is hardly a relic from a fading past. At 41, he offers one glimpse of the future as a member of a new breed of younger priests ordained during the 25-year papacy of Pope John Paul II and passionately committed to the pope's orthodox positions on issues.
As the health of John Paul - now 84 and the third-longest serving pontiff in history - continues to falter, men such as Gonzalez stand ready to guard and propagate his legacy. They represent a global trend toward Christian orthodoxy, in contrast to a generation of more liberal priests ordained during the 1960s reforms of the Second Vatican Council.
"We are very, very faithful to the Holy Father and not in any way dissenting from the teachings of the church," Gonzalez says of like-minded colleagues.
In a 1995 interview, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Catholic Church's doctrinal czar, was asked to describe what Pope John Paul II meant when he said that the third millennium would be a ''springtime of the human spirit.'' Ratzinger sketched the pope's hopeful vision that, after two millennia of division, the third millennium would be one of unity among peoples and religions, in which the entire human family would come together to build God's kingdom.
Then Ratzinger added dryly: ''At the moment, I do not yet see it approaching.'' That in a nutshell captures the difference between John Paul and the Bavarian theologian who has been his intellectual guru since 1981 and who is back in the headlines with a new critique of feminism. The pope and Ratzinger -- head of what is known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- share a basically conservative stance on most issues that constitute the culture wars in the West.
Yet John Paul plays the part of Ronald Reagan to Ratzinger's Pat Buchanan; the pope is optimistic, cheerful, brimming with confidence, and Ratzinger is less sanguine about the movements of history. Whereas John Paul sees a church on the brink of expansion, Ratzinger believes that Christianity must become smaller to be faithful.
This frank realism may explain why Ratzinger, who ironically started out as a liberal reformer at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, has been dubbed the ''Panzer-Kardinal'' by the German press. He is not one to apply a polite gloss, as the world saw anew on July 31 with his ``Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women.''
The letter pulls no punches. ''Radical feminism'' has promoted a climate of hostility between men and women, it argues, and has led women to deny or play down their distinctive maternal and nurturing instincts. It has also spread confusion about gender that promotes tolerance of homosexuality. The alternative vision, according to the letter, is ''the collaboration of men and women,'' meaning that differences between the sexes should be seen as complementary rather than competitive.
Feminism is merely Ratzinger's latest target. Since John Paul tapped him as the church's top theologian in 1981, he has been the driving force in several other battles:
• In the 1980s, Ratzinger cracked down on ''liberation theology,'' a movement in Latin America that sought to ally the Catholic Church with progressive efforts for social change. Ratzinger felt that the liberationists were Marxists who wanted to introduce class struggle in the Catholic Church.
• Under Ratzinger, the Catholic Church has emphatically criticized homosexuality and gay marriage. A famous 1986 Vatican document over his signature called homosexuality a tendency toward ''intrinsic moral evil.'' It is still the official position of the Catholic Church.
• In the 1990s, Ratzinger disciplined a series of Catholic theologians who expressed a belief that non-Christian religions are a positive part of God's plan.
• Ratzinger has made it much more difficult for Catholic theologians to challenge the Vatican or the bishops, insisting that even routine pronouncements enjoy a kind of infallibility.
• Most recently, a confidential memo was unearthed in which Ratzinger stated that pro-abortion Catholic politicians could be barred from receiving Holy Communion -- an explosive position that could affect Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and many other American politicians.
It's certainly possible that the Catholic Church would have taken many of these positions even without Ratzinger. Yet the intensity of the debates owes much to the man -- who, it should be said, comes across in person as meek and humble, not like the bull in a china shop that his public persona suggests.
Supporters believe that he has brought clarity to a muddled world, while critics say that he has put the Catholic Church on the wrong side of progress.
What's clear is that his effect has been felt far outside the Catholic Church, which is unusual for a Vatican official. His anti-liberation theology crusade, for instance, helped change the course of political development in Latin America, depriving progressive governments of Catholic support.
At 77, is Ratzinger's career at twilight? Not necessarily; at that age Cardinal Angelo Roncalli was elected pope as John XXIII in 1958. Indeed, there's a constituency in the College of Cardinals, the body that elects the pope, that would love to see the same thing happen to Ratzinger. Yet the likelihood is that age and controversy make him a long shot.
Even so, few figures in the last 100 years of Catholic history have done more to shape their times. Ratzinger is proof that even in a secularized, post-Christian world, the Catholic Church matters. Whether he has deployed its resources for good or ill largely frames the debate facing Catholicism today.
Afghanistan's religious leaders decreed poppy cultivation, which makes the country the world's biggest opium producer, illegal, a move that will aid efforts to end the $2.3 billion drugs trade, the United Nations said.
Afghanistan's Council of Ulemas earlier this month issued a fatwa, or religious decree, saying the cultivation, processing trafficking and consumption of drugs must be prevented, said Mohammad Reza Amirkhizi, the representative in the country of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, according to a UN statement.
The order ``sends a clear message that opium poppy cultivation, even if it is not consumed by Muslims or if it is done out of poverty, is illegal,'' Amirkhizi said.
Sydney's Cardinal George Pell has urged a Melbourne man who alleges he was brutalised at the Salesians' Rupertswood College at Sunbury outside Melbourne, to seek justice through the police or church processes in Victoria.
The Age today quotes Cardinal Pell's assurance that the allegations are "taken most seriously" and told the alleged victim, author and lateral thinker Michael Hewitt-Gleeson (pictured), to contact him if he needed help.
Pell instituted procedures to deal with abuse by Catholic priests and other church employees when he was archbishop of Melbourne.
In a statement to The Age on Monday, Dr Hewitt-Gleeson attacked the Salesian order of priests and brothers, which operates Rupertswood, for the physical violence inflicted upon him starting when he was aged eight. He sent a copy of his statement to Cardinal Pell, to the papal ambassador, the Apostolic Nuncio, and to the Provincial of the Salesians in Australia, Fr Ian Murdoch, detailing the alleged abuse.
Cardinal Pell, in an email to Dr Hewitt-Gleeson, said he had no jurisdiction over the Salesian order and urged him to enter the Catholic Church's Towards Healing process in Victoria, which deals with abuse claims, or go to the police.
The Age says Dr Hewitt-Gleeson said he thanked the Cardinal for his advice and would consider it, although he did not intend to refer the matter to the police.
The recent battle to try to remove "God" from the Pledge of Allegiance highlighted the perpetual struggle between those who want "God" banned from public schools altogether, and those who don't. CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson notes that one controversial mix of religion and public schools is student Bible clubs, which are said to be growing in popularity.
Attkisson spoke with 16-year old Kara Meeks of Salisbury, Maryland. She leads a teen Bible study group.
During the school year, the group meets on the public high school campus, once a week for about an hour. It meets elsewhere during the summer.
School Bible Clubs face constant court challenges, but they're perfectly legal - as long as they follow strict rules to maintain the constitutional separation between church and state, as Kara's group does.
Though the Bible study is held on school grounds, it's held after school hours, it's student-organized, and no one is pressure to attend, so the school believes it doesn't cross any lines, Attkisson points out.
But Annie Laurie Gaylor, who leads the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national group of atheists and agnostics, insists school Bible clubs are divisive and inappropriate.
"We get complaints constantly by high schoolers who feel it creates a hostile environment where they feel aggressively prothetized, where the children and the students who belong to Bible clubs are being treated as better," Gaylor says.
