Howard Dean's Curious Christianity

CATHOLIC LEAGUE, Jan. 8 — In a prominent spread in the Jan. 7 Washington Post, Democratic candidate Howard Dean broke new ground in presidential politics: He grounded his support for homosexual “civil unions” in his Christian faith.

Citing what he called “overwhelming evidence” of a “very significant genetic component” to homosexual desires, Dean advanced this view: “From a religious point of view … if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people.”

Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights president William Donohue responded in a press release that Dean “is not entitled to hijack Christianity to argue that homosexuality is not sinful.”

As for “Dean's assertion that there is a gay gene,” Donohue noted that “there is no ‘overwhelming evidence’ on the subject either way. That this comment comes from a doctor calls into question more than his politics.”

The week before, Dean had offered a novel interpretation of the Book of Job, questioning whether the biblical text is entirely authentic and repeatedly referring to it as part of the New Testament.

Dean considers himself a Methodist; his wife is Jewish and his children are being raised in that faith.

Archbishop O'Malley Named ‘Most Inspiring Man of Year‘ BELIEFNET.COM, January — The prominent ecumenical online magazine Beliefnet.com has published a survey it conducted of its readers, who named Archbishop Sean O'Malley of Boston the Most Inspiring Person of 2003

The site noted that “O'Malley arrived at an archdiocese in spiritual crisis,” in the wake of sex-abuse scandals and immediately implemented a profoundly pastoral approach to resolving them.

Beliefnet said O'Malley “quickly moved to cut short the bitter legal fight and come to a settlement with the victims” and “began meeting with — and listening to — lay Catholic and victims’ groups.”

The site concluded that O'Malley “took the genuinely Christian approach of confessing the Church's sins” and called him “a rare religious leader who has managed to unite and inspire a wide variety of people.”

It noted that “even those who dislike his conservative views on sexual or moral issues appreciate his heartfelt efforts to restore spiritual credibility to the Church.”

New Orleans Archbishop to Withdraw Textbooks

THE TIMES-PICAYUNE, Jan. 10 — Religious-education teachers in New Orleans will have only a select group of textbooks to choose from when Catholic high school freshmen start classes next year.

The texts will have to be approved by Archbishop Alfred Hughes, who said bishops around the country should follow his example, the New Orleans daily reported.

Most of the religion textbooks in use at Catholic high schools are flawed doctrinally, he said.

In New Orleans, only textbooks that have earned a “judgment of conformity” with the Catechism of the Catholic Church will be allowed. Most high school religion books and perhaps “three-quarters” of the textbook series in use in New Orleans have not earned that certification from a bishops’ committee Archbishop Hughes heads.

Problems with such textbooks, the archbishop said, include their incomplete depiction of the sacraments, describing them as “moments to celebrate things going on in an ordinary life.”