Al Gore: Look Not on My Record, But on My Faith

THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 29-As he gears up to run for president in the year 2000, Vice President Al Gore is trying to change the image he has gained after years of voting for abortion and against many of the policy priorities of religious people.

Gore recently met with seven religion editors from around the country, including the Times' Peter Steinfels to talk about a “new partnership” between government and “faith-based organizations.”

The veep took the opportunity to talk about the central role of faith in his life and the bias of many educated, science-oriented people against religion. Gore said the attitude “peaked some time ago,” but still endures in intellectual circles.

Growing up, Gore alternated between attending his father's Southern Baptist church and the Church of Christ to which his mother belonged. He graduated from an Episcopalian high school and attended Divinity School for a year after returning from military duty in Vietnam. “His wife Tipper was an Episcopalian although she switched to his Baptist congregation after marriage at the National Episcopal National Cathedral in Washington,” said Seinfels.

But, he added, “What one sensed in the White House conversation was a Christianity that is ethical and intellectual but not especially doctrinal.”

What Nuns' Brains Can Tell Us

TIME, May 24-“When University of Kentucky epidemiologist David Snowdon makes an important discovery, he doesn't break the news at a scientific meeting or even in a peer-reviewed journal,” reported Dick Thompson, one of the magazine's science writers. “First he tells the School Sisters of Notre Dame, a group of Catholic nuns who have given their bodies — and, after death, their brains — to help Snowdon study the slow mental wasting known as Alzheimer's disease.”

Continued Thompson: “The nuns and their carefully preserved brains have proved to be an Alzheimer's research treasure. From it, Snowdon has already found that tiny strokes may be the switch that flips a mildly deteriorating brain into full-fledged dementia and, bizarrely, that the density of ideas in the writings of a 20-year-old novice may be, for reasons nobody can fathom, a predictor of Alzheimer's at age 80.”

However, Snowdon has been short on breakthroughs in understanding how to prevent the disease. “Until now,” said Thompson. “Snowdon's latest discovery … shows a strong relationship between the severe brain atrophy of Alzheimer's and low levels of the common B vitamin known as folic acid or folate. Furthermore, nuns with the highest levels of folate suffered the lowest levels of cognitive decline.”

Multi-Tasking Franciscan Friar

THE WASHINGTON POST, May 26-A story on the hectic pace of modern life did not fail to include religious settings, including the Franciscan Monastery in Washington, D.C. “It would seem an unlikely place for a modern-day multi-tasker. Soundless and serene, the 42 acres of Byzantine buildings, arched walkways and luscious gardens are a sea of tranquillity,” confided staff writer Linton Weeks. “But there, in his third-floor office, is Brother Sebastian.”

Weeks described a typical scene: “The soft-spoken friar arranges three-way conference calls. While on hold he watches TV news, checks his pager and faxes letters to friends. Pretty much all at the same time, he also prays for families pictured on his prayer board.”

Brother Sebastian was one of many subjects in Weeks' story on multi-tasking, a phenomenon that “has become part of our culture. It's who we are,” said Brother Sebastian, 38.

Said Weeks: “Call it what you will — multi-tasking, multi-processing, doing tons of things at once. We have become a nation of jugglers. Out of necessity, yes, but also out of choice.”