WICHITA, Kan. — Prominent late-term abortion provider George Tiller was shot and killed Sunday in a Wichita church where he was serving as an usher, his attorney said. The gunman fled but a city official said a suspect is in custody.
The city official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. The official did not provide additional details.
Long a focus of national anti-abortion groups, including a summer-long protest in 1991, Tiller was shot during morning services at Reformation Lutheran Church while his wife was in the choir, his attorney Dan Monnat said. Police said the gunman had fled in a car registered in Merriam, a Kansas City suburb nearly 200 miles away.
Tiller's Women's Health Care Services clinic is one of just three in the nation where abortions are performed after the 21st week of pregnancy.
Tiller's killing is "an unspeakable tragedy," his widow, four children and 10 grandchildren said in statement issued by Monnat. "This is particularly heart-wrenching because George was shot down in his house of worship, a place of peace."
The family said its loss "is also a loss for the city of Wichita and women across America. George dedicated his life to providing women with high-quality health care despite frequent threats and violence."
A protester shot Tiller in both arms in 1993, and his clinic was bombed in 1985. More recently, Monnat said Tiller had asked federal prosecutors to step up investigations of vandalism and other threats against the clinic out of fear that the incidents were increasing and that Tiller's safety was in jeopardy.
In early May, Tiller had asked the FBI to investigate vandalism at his clinic, including cut wires to surveillance cameras and damage to the roof that sent rainwater pouring into the building.
Anti-abortion groups denounced the shooting and stressed that they support only nonviolent protest. The movement's leaders fear the killing could create a backlash just as they are scrutinizing U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, whose views on abortion rights are not publicly known.
"We are shocked at this morning's disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down," Troy Newman, Operation Rescue's president, said in a statement. "Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning."
In 1991, the Summer of Mercy protests organized by Operation Rescue drew thousands of anti-abortion activists to this city for demonstrations marked by civil disobedience and mass arrests.
Tiller began providing abortion services in 1973. He acknowledged abortion was as socially divisive as slavery or prohibition but said the issue was about giving women a choice when dealing with technology that can diagnose severe fetal abnormalities before a baby is born.
After the 1991 protests, Tiller kept mostly to his heavily guarded clinic, although in 1997 he opened it to three tours by state lawmakers and the media.
Tiller remained prominent in the news, in part because of an investigation started begun by former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, an abortion opponent.
Prosecutors had alleged that Tiller had gotten second opinions from a doctor who was essentially an employee of his, not independent as state law requires. A jury in March acquitted Tiller of all 19 misdemeanor counts.
"I am stunned by this lawless and violent act, which must be condemned and should be met with the full force of law," Kline said in a written statement. "We join in lifting prayer that God's grace and presence rest with Dr. Tiller's family and friends."
Abortion opponents also questioned then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' ties to Tiller before the Senate confirmed her this year as U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary. Tiller donated thousands of dollars to Sebelius over the years.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Irish Priests Beat, Raped Children: Report
DUBLIN — Priests beat and raped children during decades of abuse in Catholic-run institutions in Ireland, an official report said on Wednesday, but it stopped short of naming the perpetrators.
Orphanages and industrial schools in 20th century Ireland were places of fear, neglect and endemic sexual abuse, the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse said in a harrowing five-volume report that took nine years to compile.
The Commission, chaired by a High Court judge, blasted successive generations of priests, nuns and Christian Brothers -- a Catholic religious order -- for beating, starving and, in some cases raping, children in Ireland's now defunct network of industrial and reformatory schools from the 1930s onwards.
"When confronted with evidence of sexual abuse, the response of the religious authorities was to transfer the offender to another location where, in many instances, he was free to abuse again," the report said.
"Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from."
The report slammed the Department of Education for its failure to stop the crimes. In rare cases when it was informed of sexual abuse, "it colluded in the silence," the report said.
Successful legal action by the Christian Brothers, the largest provider of residential care for boys in the country, led the Commission to drop its original intention to name the people against whom the allegations were made.
No abusers will be prosecuted as a result of the inquiry.
John Kelly, coordinator of the Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA) group, said there could be no closure without accountability.
"I have been getting phone calls all day from former residents, they feel their wounds have been reopened for nothing," he told Reuters. "They were promised justice by the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) in 1999 and they feel cheated. They expected that the abusers would face prosecution."
UNDERWEAR INSPECTIONS
The Christian Brothers said they were appalled at the revelations but denied that their lawsuit had obstructed the report. "We are deeply sorry, deeply regretful for what has been put before us today," Brother Edmund Garvey said.
Many of the children were sent into church care because of school truancy, petty crime or because they were unmarried mothers or their offspring. Some were used as laborers, churning out rosary beads or set to work on farms.
Sexual abuse was endemic in boys' institutions and girls were preyed on by sexual predators who were able to operate unhindered.
The Commission interviewed 1,090 men and women who were housed in 216 institutions including children's homes, hospitals and schools. They told of scavenging for food from waste bins and animal feed, of floggings, scaldings and being held under water. There were underwear inspections and in one case, a boy was forced to lick excrement from a priest's shoe.
Absconders were flogged and some had their heads shaved.
Tom Sweeney, who spent five years at industrial schools including two years at the notorious Artane Industrial School, said it still haunted its former residents.
"Unfortunately there are a lot of people that have committed suicide, there are a lot of people that have ended up in hospitals and they have been forgotten about," he said.
Revelations of abuse, including a string of scandals involving priests molesting young boys, have eroded the Catholic Church's moral authority in Ireland, once one of the most religiously devout countries in the world.
The inquiry, conducted at a reported cost of 70 million euros ($95.16 million), was announced in 1999 by then Prime Minister Bertie Ahern after he apologized to victims following revelations made in a series of television documentaries.
The government has paid out around 825 million euros in compensation to former residents of the institutions and the final bill is likely to top 1 billion euros.
Orphanages and industrial schools in 20th century Ireland were places of fear, neglect and endemic sexual abuse, the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse said in a harrowing five-volume report that took nine years to compile.
The Commission, chaired by a High Court judge, blasted successive generations of priests, nuns and Christian Brothers -- a Catholic religious order -- for beating, starving and, in some cases raping, children in Ireland's now defunct network of industrial and reformatory schools from the 1930s onwards.
"When confronted with evidence of sexual abuse, the response of the religious authorities was to transfer the offender to another location where, in many instances, he was free to abuse again," the report said.
"Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from."
The report slammed the Department of Education for its failure to stop the crimes. In rare cases when it was informed of sexual abuse, "it colluded in the silence," the report said.
Successful legal action by the Christian Brothers, the largest provider of residential care for boys in the country, led the Commission to drop its original intention to name the people against whom the allegations were made.
No abusers will be prosecuted as a result of the inquiry.
John Kelly, coordinator of the Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA) group, said there could be no closure without accountability.
"I have been getting phone calls all day from former residents, they feel their wounds have been reopened for nothing," he told Reuters. "They were promised justice by the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) in 1999 and they feel cheated. They expected that the abusers would face prosecution."
UNDERWEAR INSPECTIONS
The Christian Brothers said they were appalled at the revelations but denied that their lawsuit had obstructed the report. "We are deeply sorry, deeply regretful for what has been put before us today," Brother Edmund Garvey said.
Many of the children were sent into church care because of school truancy, petty crime or because they were unmarried mothers or their offspring. Some were used as laborers, churning out rosary beads or set to work on farms.
Sexual abuse was endemic in boys' institutions and girls were preyed on by sexual predators who were able to operate unhindered.
The Commission interviewed 1,090 men and women who were housed in 216 institutions including children's homes, hospitals and schools. They told of scavenging for food from waste bins and animal feed, of floggings, scaldings and being held under water. There were underwear inspections and in one case, a boy was forced to lick excrement from a priest's shoe.
Absconders were flogged and some had their heads shaved.
Tom Sweeney, who spent five years at industrial schools including two years at the notorious Artane Industrial School, said it still haunted its former residents.
"Unfortunately there are a lot of people that have committed suicide, there are a lot of people that have ended up in hospitals and they have been forgotten about," he said.
Revelations of abuse, including a string of scandals involving priests molesting young boys, have eroded the Catholic Church's moral authority in Ireland, once one of the most religiously devout countries in the world.
The inquiry, conducted at a reported cost of 70 million euros ($95.16 million), was announced in 1999 by then Prime Minister Bertie Ahern after he apologized to victims following revelations made in a series of television documentaries.
The government has paid out around 825 million euros in compensation to former residents of the institutions and the final bill is likely to top 1 billion euros.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Former Fundamentalist 'Debunks' Bible
CNN -- Just so you know, Bart Ehrman says he's not the anti-Christ.
He says he's not trying to destroy your faith. He's not trying to bash the Bible. And, though his mother no longer talks to him about religion, Ehrman says some of his best friends are Christian.
Ehrman, a best-selling author and a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a biblical sleuth whose investigations make some people very angry. Like the fictional Robert Langdon character played by actor Tom Hanks in the movie "Angels & Demons," he delves into the past to challenge some of Christianity's central claims.
In Ehrman's latest book, "Jesus, Interrupted," he concludes:
Doctrines such as the divinity of Jesus and heaven and hell are not based on anything Jesus or his earlier followers said.
At least 19 of the 27 books in the New Testament are forgeries.
Believing the Bible is infallible is not a condition for being a Christian.
"Christianity has never been about the Bible being the inerrant word of God," Ehrman says. "Christianity is about the belief in Christ."
Critic: 'There's a touch of arrogance' about him
Ehrman's claims have found an audience, and controversy. He's a fixture on History Channel and Discovery Channel documentaries on Christianity. He's appeared on National Public Radio, CNN and the BBC and talked about scribes misquoting Jesus on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."
Yet Ehrman's popularity also may be due to a larger trend. The books of people like Elaine Pagels, author of "The Gnostic Gospels," and Dan Brown, author of "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons," resonate with people who believe there are parts of the Bible that the church left on history's editing floor.
Some scholarly critics say Ehrman is saying nothing new.
Bishop William H. Willimon, an author and United Methodist Church bishop based in Alabama, says he doesn't like the "breathless tone" of Ehrman's work.
"He keeps presenting this stuff as if this is wonderful new knowledge that has been kept from you backward lay people and this is the stuff your preachers don't have the guts to tell, and I have," Willimon says. "There's a touch of arrogance in it."
Yet even many of Ehrman's critics say he has a knack for making arcane New Testament scholarship accessible to the public.
"He has a gift for clear thinking and an ability to present some complicated things in simple, direct ways," Willimon says.
Some pastors also say that Ehrman forces them to confront tough questions about the Bible in front of their congregations.
"His take on the scriptures is a gift to the church because of his ability to articulate questions and challenges," says Rev. Guy Williams, a blogger who also happens to be a Methodist minister in Houston, Texas. "It gives us an opportunity to wrestle with the [Bible's] claims and questions."
Ehrman: There was no resurrection
Ehrman says that no one accepts everything in the Bible. Everyone picks and chooses . He cites some New Testament's references to the role of women in church as an example.
In the first book of Corinthians, Ehrman says, the Apostle Paul insists that women should remain silent in church (1 Corinthians 14:35-36).
In the 16th chapter of the book of Romans, Paul's attitude is that women could and should be church leaders -- and he cites women who were serving as deacons and apostles in the early church, Ehrman says.
Ehrman backs his arguments with a deep knowledge of the culture and history of the New Testament world. He's written 20 books on early Christianity and is an authority on ancient manuscripts used to translate the Bible.
His claims, though, take on some of Christianity's most sacred tenets, like the resurrection of Jesus. Ehrman says he doesn't think the resurrection took place. There's no proof Jesus physically rose from the dead, and the resurrection stories contradict one another, he says.
He says he doesn't believe the followers of Jesus saw their master bodily rise from the dead, but something else.
"My best guess is that what happened is what commonly happens today when someone has a loved one die -- they sometimes think they see them in a vision," Ehrman says. "I think some of the disciples had visions."
Ehrman says he immerses himself in the Bible, though he doesn't believe in its infallibility, because it's the most important book in Western civilization.
"I have friends who teach medieval English," he says. "They don't believe in Chaucer, but they think Chaucer is important," he writes in the conclusion of "Jesus, Interrupted."
The fundamentalist turns agnostic
Ehrman once had a different attitude toward the Bible.
He was raised in the Episcopal Church in Lawrence, Kansas, and became a fundamentalist Christian at age 15 when he met a charismatic Christian youth group leader who reached out to him. Ehrman says he later persuaded his parents to embrace a more conservative brand of Christianity.
He says he became so devoted to the Bible that he memorized entire sections. He was convinced the Bible was "God's words."
But Ehrman says he began to develop doubts about the infallibility of the Bible after attending Princeton Theological Seminary to become a college Bible professor.
He even began to change his opinion of the Christian youth group leader who helped convert him. The youth leader visited Ehrman's father when he was dying of cancer in a hospital.
The youth leader used a bottle of hotel shampoo to "anoint" his father, and tried to persuade his father to confess specific sins, Ehrman says. Ehrman says he was angry at the minister for acting "self-righteous" and "hypocritical."
"For a vulnerable high-schooler who is trying to figure out the world, a personality like that is very attractive," Ehrman says. "They're like cult leaders. They have all the answers."
Ehrman says he later became an agnostic because he couldn't find the answer to another question: How could there be a God when there is so much suffering in the world? An agnostic is one who disclaims any knowledge of God, but does not deny the possibility of God's existence.
Today, Ehrman describes himself as a "happy agnostic."
But some people can't believe an agnostic can be happy, he says. They tell him that they're praying for him. Others say worse. They say he's being fooled by Satan and he's headed to hell. Some say he's the anti-Christ.
"I'm not that powerful," he says, laughing.
His family, however, feels no obligation to talk to Ehrman about his ideas on the Bible, Ehrman says. His mother, brother and sister remain conservative Christians.
He once tried to talk to his mother about his new beliefs, but the discussion proved fruitless.
"My mom is a strong evangelical," Ehrman says. "We talk basketball. We don't talk religion."
Still, Ehrman says he still sends his mother and siblings copies of his latest books. They've never responded, he says.
"I imagine they're hidden in a back room," he says.
Whether it's his family, critics or students, Ehrman says he has a better handle on why he is so threatening to so many people -- some Christians worry they will make the same decision he has.
"I changed my mind," he says. "My students find me more dangerous that way. I really do know what they're talking about when they stake out an evangelical position."
Monday, May 11, 2009
Priest In Compromising Photos Admits 2-year Affair
MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- An internationally known Catholic priest who was shown in photographs last week embracing a bathing-suit-clad woman on a Florida beach has admitted they had a two-year affair.
The Rev. Alberto Cutie -- sometimes called "Father Oprah" because of the advice he gave on Spanish-language media -- said Monday on CBS' "Early Show" that he is in love with the woman and is considering his options: Whether to break up with her or leave the priesthood and marry her. The woman, who has not been publicly identified, wants to get married, Cutie said.
The priest was removed from his duties last week at St. Francis De Sales Catholic Church in Miami Beach, Florida, and on the Radio Paz and Radio Peace networks.
"I take full responsibility for what I did, and I know it's wrong," he said Monday.
The photos of the Cuban-American priest, also known as "Padre Alberto," appeared on the cover of last week's TV Notas magazine and on eight inside pages. The cover says in Spanish: "Good God! Padre Alberto. First photos of a priest 'in flagrante' with his lover."
Other media outlets throughout Latin America, including the official Notimex news agency in Mexico, picked up the story, and it became an Internet sensation. Cutie has millions of followers in the Spanish-speaking world.
In a message posted on the Miami, Florida, archdiocese Web page last week, Archbishop John C. Favalora apologized to parishioners and radio listeners for what he called a "scandal."
"Father Cutie made a promise of celibacy and all priests are expected to fulfill that promise with the help of God," Favalora said. "Father Cutie's actions cannot be condoned despite the good works he has done as a priest."
Cutie expressed his regret in an online statement last week and again Monday on the CBS program.
"I deeply apologize to the Catholic community and especially to my bishop and to my brother priests who are faithful and who are committed to celibacy," Cutie said.
The priest said he believes in celibacy but thinks it should be optional. He said he had never had a sexual relationship with anyone other than the woman since leaving the seminary 15 years ago.
"I don't support the breaking of the celibacy promise," Cutie said. "I understand fully that this is wrong.
"I don't want to be the anti-celibacy priest. I think that's unfortunate," he said. "I think it's a debate that's going on in our society, and now I've become kind of a poster boy for it. But I don't want to be that. I believe that celibacy is good, and that it's a good commitment to God. This is something I've struggled with. And something that I never expected to become a public debate."
He also talked about the woman, saying they have been friends for a long time and the attraction was there from early on, but it was not acted on until a couple of years ago. They have "both struggled" with the relationship, he said.
"She's also a woman of faith," Cutie said. "She's also somebody who cares about the priesthood, who cares about these things. So it hasn't been easy. And those who have helped me through this process know it hasn't been easy. Obviously, you know, through the photos, it looked like a frivolous thing on the beach, you know, and that's not what it is. It's something deeper than that."
Cutie was the first Catholic priest to host a daily talk show on a major secular television network, his information on the LinkedIn online professional network says.
In addition to his TV and radio appearances, he has written newspaper advice columns and a self-help book, "Real Life, Real Love."
Before being removed, he was president and general director of Pax Catholic Communications, home of Radio Paz and Radio Peace in Miami.
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