TODAY IN GOD:
RELIGION NEWS BITES FOR YOUR SNACKING PLEASURE
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Fewer baby boys being circumcised in the U.S.

SAN FRANCISCO, California — On the eighth day of her son’s life, Julia Query welcomed friends and family to celebrate his birth and honor their Jewish heritage.

But there was no crying, no scalpel, no blood, no “mohel” _ the person who traditionally performs ritual circumcisions in the Jewish faith. In fact, Elijah Rose’s “bris” differed markedly from the ceremony long used to initiate Jewish boys into a covenant with God: There was no circumcision.

“I knew before I was even pregnant that I would not circumcise,” said Query, 39, a San Francisco, California, filmmaker whose son was born in 2002. “It’s not like you’re just cutting a piece of paper off a pad — there’s no ‘cut here’ line. It’s not made to be cut off, and I would never, ever do that to my baby.”

Query is among a growing number of American parents refusing circumcision, in which the foreskin is removed from the penis.

According to a study by the National Health and Social Life Survey, the U.S. circumcision rate peaked at nearly 90 percent in the early 1960s but began dropping in the ’70s. By 2004, the most recent year for which government figures are available, about 57 percent of all male newborns delivered in hospitals were circumcised. In some states, the rate is well below 50 percent.

Experts say immigration patterns play the biggest role in the decline, which is steepest in Western states with big populations from Asian and Latin American countries where circumcision is uncommon. The trend has also accompanied a change in Americans’ attitudes toward medicine and their bodies.

“The rates of drug-free labor and breast-feeding all rose during the 1980s, while the initial declines in male circumcision rates began during the 1980s as well,” said Katharine Barrett, an anthropology lecturer at Stanford University. “It may have been part and parcel of the wider effort to reclaim bodies — adult female and infant male — from unnecessary and potentially harmful medical interventions.”
Most common surgery in U.S.

Circumcision remains the nation’s most common surgery, and the United States is still one of the few developed countries where a majority of baby boys are circumcised. But circumcision is a heated issue and the subject of vehemently pro and anti Web sites.

“We were all circumcised when I was born,” said R. Louis Schultz, a 79-year-old New Yorker and author of “Out in the Open: The Complete Male Pelvis.” “People thought it could ward off masturbation or disease, and those funny attitudes have really changed. Now people are saying, ‘Why do it?”‘
FOR THE FULL STORY (AP VIA CNN.COM) CLICK HERE

Report: Church of England is racist
LONDON – Black and Asian clergy members are unlikely to reach high office in the Church of England and minorities are sometimes marginalized in parish churches, an internal review will show, a newspaper reported Sunday.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, the report says little has been done to confront “institutional racism.” The report was commissioned by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and completed ahead of the church’s General Synod next month.

“Parish clergy are part of the problem,” the newspaper quoted the Rev. Rose Hudson-Wilkin, the chair of the committee that produced the report, as saying. “Whether consciously or unconsciously, they are not encouraging black people who are in their churches to come forward.

“Our report shows there are some who are aware of the issue and acting to improve the situation, but the church is still a long way from reaching an acceptable level of equality.”

A spokesman for the Church of England said no official comment could be made on the report’s contents until it is released.

But the report “acknowledges that while much progress has been made, there is still some way to go before the Church represents the model of equality which it believes Christ’s Gospel calls for,” the spokesman said, on condition of anonymity in line with church policy.
SOURCE: AP VIA YAHOO NEWS

Pakistan says Rushdie knighthood justifies suicide bombings

Britain’s decision to award Salman Rushdie a knighthood set off a storm of protest in the Islamic world today, with a Pakistani government minister giving warning that it could provide justification for suicide bomb attacks.

Rushdie was awarded the title in the Queen’s Birthday Honours on Saturday. He has lived under police protection since the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran pronounced a fatwa (death sentence) on him over alleged blasphemies against Islam in his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.

Today, Pakistan’s religious affairs minister suggested that the knighthood was so grave an offence that any Muslim anywhere in the world would be justified in taking violent action.

“If somebody has to attack by strapping bombs to his body to protect the honour of the Prophet then it is justified,” Mr ul-Haq told the National Assembly.

The minister, the son of Zia ul-Haq, the military dictator who died in a plane crash in 1988, later retracted his statement in parliament, then told the AFP news agency that he meant to say that knighting Rushdie would foster extremism.

“If someone blows himself up he will consider himself justified. How can we fight terrorism when those who commit blasphemy are rewarded by the West?” he said.

He said Pakistan should sever diplomatic ties with Britain if it did not withdraw the award, adding:”We demand an apology by the British government. Their action has hurt the sentiments of 1.5 billion Muslims…

“If Muslims do not unite, the situation will get worse and Salman Rushdie may get a seat in the British parliament.”
FOR THE FULL STORY (UK TIMESONLINE.COM) CLICK HERE

Pope Benedict decries fighting in Middle East
ASSISI, Italy – Pope Benedict XVI made a pilgrimage to the birthplace of peace-loving St. Francis Sunday, lamenting the violence in the Middle East and decrying “the illusion” that force could resolve conflicts.

The pope journeyed to this Umbrian hill town to mark the 800th anniversary of the conversion of Francis of Assisi, who, as Benedict put it, turned away from a materialistic life as the “king of partying” to one of simplicity and spirituality.

Benedict said he considered it his duty in Francis’ birthplace – “this city of peace” – to make “a pressing and heartfelt appeal so that all the armed conflicts that bloody the earth may cease, so that weapons may go silent and so that, everywhere, hate gives way to love, offense to forgiveness and discord to union.”

“We feel spiritually close to all those who weep, who suffer and who die because of war and its tragic consequences in whatever part of the world,” the pope said at the end of Mass in a courtyard below the Basilica of St. Francis, which houses the saint’s tomb.

“Our thoughts go in a special way to the Holy Land, beloved by St. Francis, to Iraq, to Lebanon, to the entire Middle East,” the pontiff said. “The populations of those places have known, for too long, the horrors of fighting, of terrorism, of blind violence, the illusion that force can resolve conflicts.”

“Only responsible and sincere dialogue, backed by the generous support of the international community, can put an end to so much sorrow and restore life and dignity,” Benedict sad.
FOR THE FULL STORY (AP VIA DALLASMORNINGNEWS.COM) CLICK HERE

Behind a Nazi Plot to Seize the Pope
In September 1943, the tide of the war was turning against the Nazis, and a secret plan to kidnap — and possibly kill — Pope Pius XII was under way.

Hitler, whose mental condition was deteriorating, feared the Pope would speak out about Nazi actions against the Jews, and ordered his SS leader in Italy, Gen. Karl Wolff, to carry out the deed.

Author Dan Kurzman relates the secret plan in his new book, A Special Mission: Hitler’s Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius the XII. Kurzman, a former foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, was the first journalist to interview Wolff following his release from prison after the war.

Kurzman describes Wolff as a successful opportunist who earns both the confidence of Hitler and of the pontiff himself, whom Wolff warned about the plot during a secret meeting at the Vatican in 1944. Wolff and others in Rome hoped to use the pope as an intermediary for a negotiated peace and an Anglo-American-German campaign against the Soviets.

A Special Mission also touches on the 1933 Nazi-Vatican Concordat, the roots of Pius’s silence on the murder of the Jews and the role of Rome’s chief rabbi, Israel Zolli, who ultimately converted to Catholicism.
TO LISTEN TO THE FULL STORY (ON NPR’S “ALL THINGS CONSIDERED) AND TO READ A EXCERPT FROM KURZMAN’S BOOK) CLICK HERE