Philadelphia council rescinds ‘pro- choice city’ designation

PHILADELPHIA – Cardinal thanked the Philadelphia City Council June 14 for voting to rescind a “troubling resolution” that had declared Philadelphia a “pro-choice city.”

“The members who supported today’s resolution are to be commended for reflecting carefully upon this issue and showing the courage to revisit it,” he said in a statement shortly after the vote to rescind. “I appreciate that the council has considered seriously the sensitivities of all Philadelphians and has rightly voted to take these sensitivities into account.”

The vote to rescind was 13-4; nine council members had supported the original nonbinding resolution June 7, while eight members had opposed it. Two of the three Catholic council members who had supported the designation reversed their votes.

After the first vote, Cardinal Rigali had called the declaration of the city as “pro- choice” both “divisive and erroneous.”

“In a city where so many people vigorously defend life at every stage, proclaiming Philadelphia ‘pro-choice’ is inconsistent with reality,” he said. “It unfairly saddles those who support life at all stages with this shameful label.”

The June 7 vote on the nonbinding resolution came only hours after Philadelphia was named the city with the highest murder rate in the country, leading Cardinal Rigali to chide the council for passing such a meaningless measure in the wake of the city’s disturbing trends in violent crime.

“Council members who voted for it should apologize to the thousands of Philadelphians they have offended today,” he said, “and turn their energies toward improving the quality of life and the safeguarding of all residents.” The Philadelphia-based National Catholic Bioethics Center had joined the cardinal in condemning the original vote. “We are known as the ‘City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection,’“ said a statement issued by the center June 13. “There is nothing loving about the assault on human life that is abortion. It is a tragic violation of both our vulnerable sisters and their never-to-be-born children.”

The original resolution was introduced by Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown at the request of Planned Parenthood.

Brown acknowledged that the resolution was passed at the request of a special- interest group, and that Planned Parenthood had helped her craft the document.

“They asked me to do it. I agreed with their views and I agreed to introduce the resolution,” she told The Bulletin, a Philadelphia evening newspaper. “At the end of the day, we have to decide what we want the city to look like and be about.”

She declined a request for comment from The Catholic Standard & Times, Philadelphia archdiocesan newspaper.

A representative for Dayle Steinberg, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania, told the Standard & Times that Steinberg “did not have time in her schedule” to talk about the resolution. One councilman, Deacon Juan Ramos of St. Peter the Apostle , said he was not surprised that Planned Parenthood was behind the resolution. “The language of the resolution told me she had gotten it from one of the pro-abortion activist groups,” he said.

Although the resolution was largely symbolic, he and other members of the council believed it sent a false message about the city.

“This city cannot just be classified as a pro-choice city, because there are hundreds of thousands of people in this city who are pro-life, like myself,” he said.

The original resolution says the council reaffirms Philadelphia’s “long-standing position as a pro-choice city, and encourages other cities around the country to join us in voicing official support for reproductive rights.” “Being a pro-choice city means encouraging the expansion of all forms of reproductive health care,” the resolution states. “Being a pro-choice city means defending the right to choose a legal and safe abortion as a final but critical option for women.”

City Council President Anna C. Verna voted against the city’s designation as pro- choice, saying it “does not respect the views of thousands of the city’s citizens who do not agree with it.”

Councilman Jack Kelly, who also voted against the resolution, said he was taken by surprise when it came before the committee, because he had only heard about it that morning. After asking Brown not to introduce it, he told his colleagues that voting in favor of such a resolution would be “a slap in the face of our constituents with different viewpoints.”

Another opponent, Councilman Frank Rizzo Jr., said he found the whole process unnecessary. “It’s nonbinding,” Rizzo said. “There are not going to be signs (that say), ‘Welcome to Philadelphia: Pro-Choice City.’ That’s not going to happen. It was just unnecessary. I don’t understand why we even went there.”

Philadelphia would have been the largest U.S. jurisdiction to adopt such a resolution, joining the California cities of West Hollywood, Berkeley and Santa Cruz.

Contributing to this report were Susan Brinkmann, Lou Baldwin, Christie Chicoine, Barbara Fitzgerald and Nadia Pozo.

After Vatican criticism, Amnesty defends new policy on abortion

LONDON – has defended its new policy on abortion after a Vatican official said Catholics might need to withdraw their financial support of the organization. “Amnesty International’s position is not for abortion as a right but for women’s human rights to be free of fear, threat and coercion as they manage all consequences of rape and other grave human rights violations,” said Kate Gilmore, the London-based executive deputy secretary-general of the international human rights organization.

“Ours is a movement dedicated to upholding human rights, not specific theologies,” she said in a statement June 14. “It means that sometimes the secular framework of human rights that Amnesty International upholds will converge neatly with the standpoints of certain faith-based communities; sometimes it will not.”

In an e-mail interview with the National Catholic Register in New Haven, Conn., Cardinal , president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said Amnesty had “betrayed its mission” by abandoning its traditional neutral policy on abortion in favor of a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.

“To selectively justify abortion, even in the cases of rape, is to define the innocent child within the womb as an enemy, a ‘thing’ that must be destroyed,” Cardinal Martino wrote. “How can we say that killing a child in some cases is good and in other cases it is evil?

“I believe that, if in fact Amnesty International persists in this course of action, individuals and Catholic organizations must withdraw their support because, in deciding to promote abortion rights, AI has betrayed its mission,” the cardinal said.

But Amnesty claimed that it did not promote abortion as a universal right and that it remains silent on the rights and wrongs of abortion.

“Amnesty International’s actual policy … standing alongside its long-standing opposition to forced abortion, is to support the decriminalization of abortion, to ensure women have access to health care when complications arise from abortion and to defend women’s access to abortion, within reasonable gestational limits, when their health or human rights are in danger,” the June 14 statement said.

In a May 25 letter to supporters of Catholics Against Capital Punishment, Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said that “in the context of war, rape has been used as a brutal instrument of domination. It is committed with the deliberate intention of causing pregnancy, thereby destroying community and family bonds through the pernicious influences of humiliation and shame.”

He noted that in some cultures women who have been raped are killed by their own family members to maintain their honor. He also pointed out that in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where abortion is illegal, women who have been raped and seek to end the pregnancies “have suffered terribly botched abortions that have had a debilitating impact on their health and, in certain cases, resulted in death.”

He pointed out that the Amnesty policy adopted in April supported access to comprehensive medical care, including safe abortion, for women who have become pregnant from rape, sexual assault or incest, or whose lives or health “are at grave risk due to pregnancy.” The new policy also urges governments to ensure access to health and other services to women who have complications from unsafe abortions. It opposes imprisonment and other criminal penalties for having, providing information about or performing abortions.

Amnesty was set up in 1961 by the late Peter Benenson, an English convert to Catholicism, to fight for the release of prisoners of conscience, for fair trials for political prisoners and for an end to torture, ill treatment, political killings, disappearances and the death penalty.

In April, Amnesty adopted a new policy advocating the global decriminalization of abortion, following an international consultation that arose from the group’s Stop Violence Against Women campaign.

Amnesty now supports a right to abortion for women impregnated by rape or incest or in cases of grave risks to the mother’s health or life.

At its international council meeting in Mexico in August, Amnesty will consider expanding its policy on abortion. It said it would decide the question of whether a woman’s “right to physical and mental integrity includes her right to terminate her pregnancy.” In New Zealand, a Catholic bishop who deals with education said Catholic schools can still donate to Amnesty International, but they should ensure their funds are not used to support abortion.

In a May 29 letter, Bishop Peter Cullinane of Palmerston North said, “Amnesty International is involved in many aspects of human rights and justice issues … and our schools are entitled to support these other activities carried out by Amnesty International.”

However, Amnesty spokeswoman Eulette Ewart said that Catholics would not be able to specify that money did not go to abortion.

“It is slightly difficult because we are not campaigning for abortion, so no money would go to that, and our money is not divided up that way,” she told Catholic News Service June 14. “What we are saying is that in dire situations women should have the right to a safe and legal abortion if they so wish.”

Contributing to this story were Barb Fraze in Washington and Gavin Abraham in Auckland, New Zealand.

St. Joseph cancer center joins pilot program

The Cancer Institute at St. Joseph Medical Center, Towson, has announced it will participate in a pilot program to extend the reach of National Cancer Institute (NCI) research and state-of-the-art treatment into more states, cities and towns.

The program will focus on bringing more Americans into a system of high-quality cancer care, increasing participation in Phase II clinical trials and reduce cancer health care disparities. St. Joseph is the only Maryland hospital in the pilot program, known as the NCI Community Cancer Centers Programs (NCCCP), which includes 14 nation-wide sites and 16 community hospitals.

“This pilot program will expand clinical trial availability and increase cancer survival for segments of our society who do not presently have access to this type of care,” said Dr. Mark Krasna, medical director of The Cancer Institute.

Pope says Catholics must help Latin America spiritually, materially

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — In the face of poverty, secularization and the spread of sects in Latin America, Catholics around the world must form strong communities of faith ready to help them spiritually and materially, Pope Benedict XVI said.

The pope met June 14 at the Vatican with members of the “Populorum Progressio” Foundation, which funds small development, education and health care projects aimed at assisting poor indigenous, mixed-race and black farming communities in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Since 1992, the foundation established by Pope John Paul II has distributed more than $20 million in grants using funding provided primarily by the Italian bishops’ conference.

Pope Benedict said that in setting up the foundation Pope John Paul wanted to assist “those peoples whose ancestral customs were threatened by a postmodern culture” and who risked the destruction of their “traditions, so open to accepting the truth of the Gospel.”

With six Latin American bishops and one Vatican official on the foundation’s administrative council, the pope said, funding decisions are “in the hands of those who know best the problems and concrete needs of those populations.” The pope said the foundation also recognizes that development aid must assist the whole person and not just aim at relieving material poverty.

“Often, a person’s true poverty is a lack of hope” and of faith that gives meaning to life, he said.

“Latin America is a part of the world that is rich in natural resources, where the differences in standards of living must give way to a spirit of sharing goods,” the pope said.

“In the face of secularization, the proliferation of sects and the indigence of so many of our brothers and sisters,” he said, “it is urgent to form communities united in the faith, like the Holy Family of Nazareth, in which the joyful witness of those who have encountered the Lord is the light that enlightens those who are seeking a more dignified life.”

Vatican official says labor, trade practices should protect worker

GENEVA (CNS) — Labor, trade and investment policies and practices should value and protect the worker, a Vatican official told delegates at an international labor conference.

Global labor standards that widen worker protections “should not be considered a burden on trade agreements but rather a concrete support for human rights of workers and a condition for more equitable competition on the global level,” said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, Vatican representative to U.N. agencies in Geneva.

The archbishop spoke June 13 during an annual labor conference sponsored by the U.N.’s International Labor Organization, meeting May 30-June 15 in Geneva. In 2006, some 195 million adults were unable to find work and 1.4 billion people were working jobs “that did not pay enough to lift them above the $2 a day poverty line,” the archbishop said.

“Much of the restlessness and many of the conflicts that torment our society are rooted in the lack of jobs, in employment which lacks decent work conditions or living wages, and unjust economic relations,” he told the delegates.

The situation must be corrected by fighting discrimination and boosting social protections, he said, adding that the creation of new jobs is urgently needed “as the first means to prevent discrimination and poverty.”

He said work, business, “financial investments, trade and production should be rooted in a creative, cooperative and rule-based effort at the service” of people.

A worker’s personal talents should also be “invested for the common good,” he added.

Among the workers he said “deserve special attention in the new market” were women not receiving equal pay for equal work “and in need of fairness in career advancement; people with disabilities;” migrants; people living with HIV/AIDS; and working parents trying to juggle their responsibilities to their employers and families.

U.N. president from Bahrain receives 2007 Path to Peace Award

UNITED NATIONS (CNS) — Haya Rashed Al Khalifa, the first woman elected president of the U.N. General Assembly since 1969, is the 2007 winner of the Path to Peace Award. Archbishop , apostolic to the United Nations and president of the Path to Peace Foundation, an agency established to carry out projects in support of the work of the mission to the United Nations, presented the award to Al Khalifa June 12 at U.N. headquarters in New York.

The archbishop said Al Khalifa was being honored “for the graceful and determined way in which she has striven over the last year to forge ‘paths to peace.'”

“She is only the third woman president in 61 years, the last one serving in 1969,” he added. “That alone is an achievement, and she brought to this extremely taxing position at the summit of the world’s premier international body an energy that is as politically effective as it is diplomatically discreet.”

Archbishop Migliore said the Vatican remains “convinced more than ever that if the U.N. did not exist the world’s nations would surely have to invent it or something very like it.”

“While not ignoring its shortcomings, we do appreciate and support the U.N.’s consistent and steady pace toward peace, human rights, humanitarian relief and development,” he said.

Archbishop Migliore also presented the foundation’s Servitor Pacis (Latin for “servant of peace”) Award to Carl Anderson, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, and to Sister Sabina Iragui Redin, a Daughter of Charity who has been working with the poor in for 30 years.

A June 4 announcement on the Path to Peace Award said Al Khalifa was the unanimous choice of the foundation’s board and was selected “in recognition of her dedicated efforts on behalf of peace and development.”

At the time of her election as president of the 61st session of the U.N. General Assembly June 8, 2006, Al Khalifa was serving as legal adviser to the royal court of Bahrain.

One of the first women to practice law in her country, she has held a variety of posts with leading law organizations of the world, including the International Bar Association, where she was vice chairwoman of the arbitration and dispute resolution committee.

Al Khalifa also served as Bahrain’s ambassador to France from 2002 to 2004 and as nonresident ambassador to Belgium, Switzerland and . At the same time she was her country’s representative to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

She is currently Bahrain’s representative on the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce.

Al Khalifa, who speaks Arabic, English and French, has presented numerous papers at legal conferences on topics such as diplomacy, international arbitration, dispute resolution and the status of women in the Middle East.

The Path to Peace Award is given annually to an individual committed to the development of peace in the national and international arenas. Previous winners include Kofi Annan and Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former U.N. secretaries-general; Cardinal , former Vatican secretary of state; and such former national leaders as Xanana Gusmao of East Timor, Corazon Aquino of the and Lech Walesa of .

Last year the award went to Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxembourg, a good- will ambassador for UNESCO since 1997.

Sen. Cardin meets with Md. religious leaders

In his first official assembly with Maryland religious leaders, Sen. Ben Cardin laid out his vision for the war in Iraq, immigration reform, peace intervention in the Holy Land and national health coverage, and set up a process to confer with the group on a regular basis. The newly elected Democratic senator – who recently returned from a congressional tour of the Middle East – told the Central Maryland Ecumenical during a June 11 meeting in Baltimore he shared their frustration with the war in Iraq and was working on a strategy to bring U.S. troops home from the region.

Members of Central Maryland Ecumenical have vigorously opposed continued U.S. involvement in Iraqi combat.

“It’s been a tragedy,” Sen. Cardin said. “The focus America has had on Iraq has led to the exclusion of other troubling spots in the world, and the loss of life has been devastating.”

The senator – like a majority of his colleagues in the U.S. Congress – supports shifting responsibility of Iraq’s security to that country’s political leaders and military, and to slowly withdraw American troops.

President George W. Bush has rejected any calls for a scheduled exit, asserting that such a move would be viewed as surrender and would produce chaos and civil war. The president’s critics consider Iraq already engulfed in a full-scale civil war.

Pope Benedict XVI “called some time ago for an honest discussion about what has been gained by this intervention,” said Bishop Denis J. Madden, urban vicar and the Catholic representative at the June 11 meeting. “How much better off are the people in Iraq now, and is our presence beneficial to them?”

Bishop Madden agreed continued U.S. involvement makes it difficult for political leaders to focus on the enduring strife between Israelis and Palestinians, and was jubilant when Sen. Cardin agreed to throw his support behind American peace initiatives.

His recent tour of troubled areas in Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian region reinforced the senator’s resolve that U.S. intervention is needed to find a way for Israelis and Palestinians to harmoniously coexist.

Though Sen. Cardin’s visit to the Palestinian region could be viewed by fellow Jews as disloyalty to the Israeli people, Bishop Madden viewed the pilgrimage as an even- handed approach to resolving a humanitarian crisis for people of all faiths in the region.

“Sen. Cardin certainly wants security for the Jews in Israel, but he is also sensitive to the needs of the Palestinian community,” he said. “This was encouraging to hear.”

With the immigration reform bill stalling in Congress, the senator told religious leaders he would work for legislation that would focus more on family unification among immigrants, measures that would allow illegal aliens to come out of the shadows and stronger border security.

“There is also a need for universal (health care) coverage,” Sen. Cardin said. “I would like to pass a bill that would require more companies to provide health insurance. That is where I think we should start.”

Central Maryland Ecumenical comprises Christian leaders from Catholic and Protestant faiths, but the group also invited Jewish and Muslim representatives to its meeting with the senator.

Sen. Cardin – who was a Maryland representative in the U.S. House for many years before his election to the Senate last fall – wants to meet with the group on a regular basis.

“The faith community can help us a great deal,” he said. “They have a significant audience. They can get the word out and clear up a lack of understanding with a lot of these complicated bills.”

17th-Annual Catholic Family Expo opens June 27

With a stable of speakers ranging from bishops to an internationally recognized movie star, organizers of the 17th-Annual Catholic Family Expo at the Baltimore Convention Center June 27 to July 1 hope to motivate attendees to return to their parishes inspired to serve God.

Anticipating an attendance of 2,000-3,000 people, more than 100 volunteers have been coordinating for months to provide speakers who will discuss subjects that reflect every aspect of Catholicism for every age, said Miki Hill, who with her husband, Tim, established the Catholic Family Network at their Woodstock home in 1990.

Ms. Hill, a parishioner of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, Woodstock, believes that with topics on home schooling, prayer, religious vocations, parenting, youth issues, pro- life messages, conversion and end-of-life concerns, the expo will cover the gamut of Catholic life.

The expo kicks off June 27 with a writing seminar and an SAT preparation course, and the first day of seminars, hosted mainly by Catholic scholars and local speakers, opens June 28.

Saturday evening will feature a pre-release viewing of the film “Bella” and personal testimony of international film actor Eduardo Verastegui, who stars in the movie, followed by a youth rally.

The Hills’ 18-year-old daughter Mary said this year’s Baltimore event provides a great venue for younger Catholics to grasp an identity in their religion.

The nursing student and youth minister at St. Alphonsus Rodriguez will conduct a seminar this year at the Baltimore expo called “It’s Cool to be Catholic ,” a discussion aimed at rousing young Catholics to become invested in their faith and the good works of their church.

She will be one of more than 50 speakers at the Baltimore expo, which has also attracted 100 vendors and exhibitors for the 2007 event.

In the last couple of years the expo has spawned similar conventions in venues around the world.

The Hills and their legions of volunteers have already helped two groups in Ireland establish Catholic Family Expos, and last spring one debuted in Charlotte, N.C., attracting more than 200 to the campus of Belmont Abbey College.

Others in Charleston, S.C. and West Palm Beach, Fla. are expected to debut in the next year and volunteers from the Catholic Family Network met with Bishop Karl Josef Romer, secretary to Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo of the Pontifical Council on the Family in Rome last year, a conference that produced plans to establish a European Catholic Family Expo.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore and other dioceses in the mid-Atlantic region have been generous in promoting the Baltimore expo, Ms. Hill said.

“All of these issues ultimately affect our happiness and the topics are not just about following the dos and don’ts of the Church,” she said. “Combining our faith and reason will bring us confidence in a world that can be confusing at times.”

For more information about The Catholic Family Expo 2007, visit the group’s Web site at http://www.catholicfamilyexpo.org.

Anatomy of a volunteer

Amid 10,000 people serving as volunteers for one Catholic organization, there are bound to be common traits. Yet they won’t be found in appearance, age, marital status or gender.

Instead, the inner workings of humans is where the anatomy of a volunteer forms. Openness, giving back, acceptance of differences, wanting to contribute – these characteristics are what Dennis Murphy consistently recognizes in volunteers as program manager of volunteer outreach with Catholic Charities’ Our Daily Bread Employment Center, Baltimore.

“The most important criteria is the willingness to serve,” said Mr. Murphy who manages 300 regular volunteers yet witnesses 10,000 total pass through Our Daily Bread annually from various organizations, schools, churches of all denominations and businesses.

“Most know their life is pretty good and want to give back,” he said, “and feel this is a good way to do it. They are open to the experience. They meet people here they wouldn’t encounter in their everyday lives.”

Typically, he observes a 50/50 male and female split among the regular unpaid helpers; about 40 couples volunteer together. Since the primary time to serve clients at Our Daily Bread is mid-day, Mr. Murphy notices most volunteers are 60 plus and retired.

On weekends though, it’s different. “They tend to be younger,” he said, as many colleges and church groups assist. It can be tricky then to label the composition of an average volunteer.

For Corj Simmons, it’s a bit easier to categorize. As manager of retail at Good Samaritan Hospital, Baltimore, she shuffles around 50 volunteers seven days a week between the coffee bar, and gift and thrift shops.

On weekends, hospital volunteers look a bit different than the weekenders encountered at Our Daily Bread; typically widows or those without families are the ones willing to work, said Mrs. Simmons.

Backgrounds and careers aren’t similar either; instead quite varied, she said. There are also more females. “They (women) tend to be a little more social, a little more confident in an unknown setting.”

She describes a good volunteer as someone who is willing to learn, open minded, adapts to change, is nurturing, and who can laugh at herself and life.

“A good volunteer is the one who is here to serve in whatever capacity,” said the nine-year veteran of the hospital. “They just want to be helpful and needed.”

But it’s not a perfect world, she half-joked. “When the weather is bad, you’re going to do it yourself. Volunteers don’t drive in bad weather!” Demonstrators silently protest abductions, killings in Sri Lanka

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Hundreds of local and international nongovernmental activists, wearing black cloths over their mouths as gags, staged a silent protest at Colombo’s central train station.

The approximately 400 demonstrators were denouncing the recent abduction and killing of two Red Cross workers, Shanmugalingam Kandiah, 32, and Mahadevan Chandramohan, 27, who were abducted from the same station days before the June 6 protest.

Holding the black cloth away from his mouth, Father Terrence Fernando of St. Anne’s Church in Negombo told UCA News, an Asian church news agency: “Nobody can give their life back. It is terrible.”

Father Fernando said the government should take responsibility for the killings.

He added that although the church has expressed concern about the violence in Sri Lanka religious leaders need to take more action.

“Religious leaders issue statements only,” said the priest, who brought lay Catholics from his parish north of Colombo. On June 1, an unidentified group abducted the two Red Cross workers. Their bullet- riddled bodies were found June 2 at a tea plantation 62 miles southeast of Colombo.

The Red Cross in Sri Lanka said the killings would jeopardize the commitment of its other volunteers in delivering humanitarian assistance to the needy in Sri Lanka. It called on the authorities for a full investigation.

At the train station, rush-hour commuters intent on catching trains home stopped to look at the silent protesters. About 100 of them were foreigners holding banners and signs in English, Sinhalese and Tamil that read: “Your grief is our grief,” “Stop abduction and killing” and “We share your grief.” However, no slogans were shouted.

Stories of missing business people, academics, activists and journalists abducted in Colombo, their bodies often found discarded on the roadside, appear almost daily in the news.

Sarojini Sivachandran, an activist, told UCA News that she was scared. “Daily there are murders, abductions and extortion,” she said.

The government has called for an impartial inquiry into the killings, reported local media. However, the country’s parliamentary opposition claimed the state had a hand in the killings.

The Sinhalese-led government is locked in conflict with rebels who have been fighting for Tamil autonomy in the north and east since 1983. About 60,000 people have been killed and more than a million displaced.

Bishop Ricard joins religious leaders for service focusing on hunger

WASHINGTON – Religious leaders, including Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola- Tallahassee, Fla., gathered at the Washington National Cathedral June 11 to reaffirm their mutual commitment to end hunger.

Representatives from Islam, Judaism, Christianity and other faiths joined together at the second Interfaith Convocation on Hunger to declare their religions’ intent to fight hunger and recruit others to join in the effort. Bishop Ricard delivered the opening prayer, calling on the nearly 1,000 people present to “make a deeper commitment to ending poverty on our planet.”

The need to address this problem of poverty was echoed by religious leaders and anti-hunger activists through songs, readings and talks during the two-hour service.

The Rev. David Beckmann, the president of the Christian anti-hunger group Bread for the World, said he was stunned by the diversity of the top religious leaders present.

He said they have realized that, no matter what their faith, they cannot connect with their God if they walk away from those who are hungry. And because religious leaders have overcome their differences, solving the problem of hunger is within their collective grasp, he said.

“We know that dramatic progress with hunger and poverty is now feasible in the years ahead,” Rev. Beckmann said.

The Rev. William J. Shaw, president of the National Baptist Convention USA, was the featured speaker.

Speaking with Catholic News Service after the event, Bishop Ricard said he hopes an end to poverty and hunger is not far off. Catholics need to be concerned about the problem of hunger, Bishop Ricard said, because “it’s the Gospel mandate.”

“We can’t really call ourselves Christian until we see Christ, especially as he has disguised himself in the faces of the poor and those in need,” he said.

The interfaith service started on the lawn in front of the Episcopal Church’s cathedral. There were songs and some speakers, and then the event moved inside, where the altar was decorated with bushels of oranges, bananas, corn and other fruits and vegetables.

Many speakers touched on the fact that the United States – the richest nation in the world – is still a country where some people go to bed hungry. Imam Mohamed Magid was one of those who pointed out the disparity. The executive director of the Virginia-based All Dulles Area Muslim Society, Imam Magid told a story about his life as a young man in Sudan. The people were suffering, he said, because it had not rained in a long time. The poor started walking to the capital, Khartoum, looking for food. He heard about the suffering, so went to a refugee camp to help.

“I couldn’t believe what I saw there,” the imam said. He saw a woman with a small child in her arms, and he smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. He told her help had arrived. She looked at him and said, “Son, you are late. The baby is half-dead.”

Years later, Imam Magid said, he arrived in the United States, the country that had provided the food for the impoverished refugees in Sudan. He thought it was impossible that a person could live in the United States and also live in poverty, but he realized he was wrong.

Imam Magid made an appeal to the audience at the National Cathedral: “Let us vow to never be late again.”

At the end of the service, Sister Mary Dacey, a Sister of St. Joseph who is president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the Rev. Robert Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, and Bishop James C. Richardson, presiding bishop of the Apostle Church of Christ in God, led a prayer committing those present to ending hunger.

The second Interfaith Convocation on Hunger was organized by Bread for the World and sponsored by the Interfaith Anti-Hunger Coordinators. It was part of a four-day Bread for the World gathering of religious leaders and anti-hunger activists that culminated the day following the interfaith prayer service with a day of lobbying.

The organizers hoped to persuade members of Congress to make changes to the farm bill that would improve the quality of life for the hungry and the poor.

The first Interfaith Convocation on Hunger was held in the National Cathedral in 2005. Bread for the World, which lobbies political leaders to makes laws addressing poverty and hunger, and the Interfaith Anti-Hunger Coordinators, a group of Christian and Jewish leaders who coordinate anti-hunger programs, were both involved in creating the first convocation.

Survey notes attitudinal differences in heavy, light TV watchers

WASHINGTON – A newly published survey shows notable differences in the attitudes of heavy TV watchers and light TV watchers on several social and political issues.

According to the survey’s findings, heavy TV viewers – defined as those who watch four hours or more each evening – are less likely to volunteer their time or to make charitable contributions than light TV viewers, defined as those who watch an hour or less each night.

The heavy TV viewers are also less likely to go to church, less likely to place limits on the availability of divorce, and less likely to describe themselves as pro-life than those who are light TV viewers.

They also are more likely to believe the government should be responsible for providing retirement benefits to Americans, more likely to prefer government health care to private health care, and more likely to say they would cheat a restaurant that underbilled them – but less likely to believe the media are harming America’s moral values.

The survey was conducted by telephone with 2,000 respondents in March by the Culture and Media Institute, a new program of the Media Research Center, a media watchdog group based in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Va. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

In the survey, 25 percent of the respondents said they watched more than four hours of television each evening, while 22 percent said they watched an hour or less of TV every evening. For the rest of the respondents, TV viewing ranged between less than one hour and four hours.

“We’re not saying it’s science, but we think it has some very interesting correlations,” said Bob Knight, director of the Culture and Media Institute, during a June 6 forum in Washington at which the survey findings were released.

S. Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs and a speaker at the forum, took note of a survey conclusion that there has been a decline in the nation’s morals over the past 20 years. “People have seen a decline in morals forever, and they’ve been right forever,” he said. “You have to differentiate between perception and reality.”

Lichter also cautioned against reading too much into the survey results. Even though heavy TV viewers hold the attitudes they do, he said, “that doesn’t mean that television brought people to those conclusions.”

It is also true, Lichter said, that TV viewing is heaviest among lower-income groups and nonwhite populations. Those groups tend to identify with the Democratic Party, which advocates many of the policy positions shared by the heavy-TV watchers. “We have to be careful with the chicken and the egg,” Lichter said.

Movie critic and radio talk-show host Michael Medved, another speaker at the forum, said TV watching “changes the culture” by making people more pessimistic and fearful, more impatient and more superficial.

“We don’t have a (TV) news business,” Medved said. “We have a bad-news business,” which makes viewers pessimistic and fearful. TV news, he added, does “a good job in showing you horrible things,” part of what he called a credo of “if it bleeds, it leads.”

One sign that TV viewers are increasingly impatient is the complaint among elementary schoolteachers that their students “can’t sit still because of TV,” Medved said. Another sign, he added, is that men, emboldened by the availability of the remote control, now watch only 18 minutes of a TV program on average. That figure, according to Medved, is only as high as it is because men tune in to TV sports.

One recent manifestation of TV’s superficiality came in the aftermath of a recent televised debate among the Republican presidential hopefuls. Rather than discuss aspects of the theory of evolution brought up in the debate, commentators spent more time on “how good Mitt Romney looks,” Medved said. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, is one of the GOP candidates.

The amount of time spent in front of the TV by heavy-viewing Americans, according to Medved, dovetails with U.S. Department of Labor findings that TV is turned on in the average American household 29 hours a week. “Even if you watch the Discovery Channel (and) the History Channel four hours a night it’s still going to have a negative impact,” he said.