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(Packages of Halal food are displayed in a supermarket in Nantes, western France, September 7, 2010. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe)

A TV documentary’s revelation that slaughterhouses around Paris have switched meat production entirely to halal methods has stirred a political storm in France, where attitudes to Europe’s largest Muslim minority are a subtext in a presidential election campaign. The France 2 documentary last week said all of the abattoirs in the greater Paris region were producing only halal-style meat, selling some without labelling it as such to avoid the cost of running separate lines for halal and non-halal customers.

Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen – who is hoping to win voters away from centre-right President Nicolas Sarkozy ahead of the two-round election in April and May – has seized on the issue. “All the abattoirs of the Paris region have succumbed to the rules of a minority. We have reason to be disgusted,” Le Pen told a rally in Lille on Saturday, pledging to file a legal complaint.

In a country known for its obsession with the provenance of its cuisine, the issue could play with a wider audience than the far right, including animal rights groups, consumer advocates and food industry professionals.

Some European animal rights campaigners say that the Islamic halal and Jewish kosher rules for ritual slaughter are less humane than standard European practice, because they ban the practice of stunning animals before they are killed.

“This polemic requires us to call for more transparency,” Frederic Freund, director of a group called Aid to Animals in Abattoirs (OABA), told RTL radio during a call-in programme.

Halal meat, slaughtered according to Islamic norms, is a booming market in France and growing demand for it on school, hospital and company canteen menus has already caused tension and misunderstandings between Muslims and non-Muslims. Officials say most of the meat consumed in and around Paris is slaughtered outside the region and much of it still comes from slaughterhouses that use non-halal methods.

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(Incoming new Cardinals at a consistory in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican February 18, 2012. REUTERS/Tony Gentile )

Pope Benedict, putting his mark on his Church’s future, on Saturday inducted 22 men into the exclusive group of cardinals who will one day elect one of their own to succeed him as leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics.

Among the most prominent in the group is New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who is already being touted by some Vatican experts as a possible future candidate to become the first American pope. Benedict, who turns 85 in April and is showing signs of his age, elevated the men to the highest Church rank below him at a ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica known as a consistory.

“Cardinals are entrusted with the service of love: love for God, love for his Church, an absolute and unconditional love for his brothers and sisters, even unto shedding their blood, if necessary (in defense of the faith),” the pope told the new cardinals before giving them their rings and red birettas, or hats.

The new cardinals are from the United States, Hong Kong, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, India, Canada, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Romania, Belgium, and Malta. Eighteen of them are aged under 80 and thus will be eligible to enter a secret conclave to elect the next pope from among their own ranks. Twelve of those are Europeans, bringing the number of “cardinal electors” from the continent to 67 out of 125.

With the new appointments, Benedict, who was elected in a secret conclave in 2005, has now named more than half the cardinal electors. The others were named by his predecessor John Paul. Compared to the 67 “cardinal electors” from Europe, Latin America now has 22, North America has 15, Africa has 11, Asia has nine and Oceania has one.

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(Visitors toast with their one-liter beer mugs during the opening day of the Munich Oktoberfest beer festival in Munich September 20, 2003. REUTERS/Michael Dalder)

Crematoriums in Germany are struggling to adapt to an increasingly obese population and a boom in extra-large coffins that has led at least one to widen its oven doors. The Schweinfurt crematorium in Bavaria had to widen the doors by 30 cm to handle larger bodies, which burn longer and hotter and now arrive around once a week, its manager said.

“We burn particularly large coffins Monday mornings when the ovens are cold,” Helmuth Schlereth said by telephone from the southern region. “There is more body fat that spreads out and has to be burned.”

Other crematoriums in the country also report an increase in the number of XXL-coffins, as Germany grapples with the growing obesity affecting many developed and emerging economies. The trend has been fuelled in part by a high-fat national cuisine known for its sausages, pork and beer, as well as a decrease in exercise among the population, which over the years has translated into bigger corpses.

“The problem is that the deceased are getting heavier, and so the burning takes longer,” said Silke Meboldt at the Albstadt-Ebingen crematorium in the neighboring state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. It’s becoming a bigger problem.”

Crematorium ovens normally operate at 800-1000 degrees Celsius but the burning process for obese bodies is hotter and takes longer than normal. Older crematoriums in particular have been adversely affected by the trend, as the incinerators are simply not designed to deal with large bodies.

“If the crematorium is older, or the design hasn’t been thought out properly then they’ll find that the coffins don’t fit in,” said Bastian Schenk, at the Aalen crematorium in southern Germany.

– by Alice Baghdjian in Berlin

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(New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan leads a mass at St. John Lateran's Basilica in Rome February 15, 2012. REUTERS/Tony Gentile)

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who will become a cardinal this weekend, has said  that part of his new job will be to convince the Vatican that his city is not a modern-day version of the Biblical cities Sodom and Gomorrah.

“New York seems to have an innate interest and respect for religion and I’m going to bring that up because I don’t like that caricature that New York is some neo-Sodom and Gomorrah” he told reporters after celebrating Mass on Thursday in Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica.

Dolan was referring to the two cities which according to the Old Testament were destroyed by God because their people were sinful and wicked. Dolan, who also holds the powerful post of president of the U.S. Bishops Conference, will be made a cardinal by Pope Benedict on Saturday at a solemn Vatican ceremony known as a consistory. After that, he and 17 other new cardinals under the age of 80 will be eligible to enter a secret conclave to elect the next leader of the world’s some 1.3 billion Roman Catholics after Benedict’s death.

“I’m here as archbishop after three years to let you know that, yup, there are instances of secularism and materialism and paganism in New York as there are everywhere and as there is in the human heart but I have found the New York community to be very religious and innately respectful of religion, interested in religion,” he said.

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(Abortion rights protestors arrive to prepare for a counter protest against March for Life anti-abortion demonstrators on the 39th anniversary of the Roe vs Wade decision, in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, January 23, 2012. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst )

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Elizabeth E. Evans is a freelance writer and columnist in Glenmoore, Pennsylvania.

By Elizabeth E. Evans

“Pro-life” and “pro-choice” extremists, you don’t speak for me

And, by the way, you don’t happen to speak for the majority of the American people either.

Over the past few weeks, the hot button issue of abortion rights in the United States has once again drawn national and sustained media attention in two events that almost seemed scripted to galvanize the certain on both sides.

First the Susan G. Komen Foundation, known for raising funds to combat breast cancer, decided to change its funding rules, with the consequence that Planned Parenthood became ineligible for grants.  Within days, . T the Twittersphere and other social media outlets lit up with glee and rage, Komen reversed its decision.

At roughly the same time, simmering outrage over the Obama administration’s plan to require that all hospitals, including those with a faith affiliation, provide free contraception (including the morning-after pill, considered by many to be an abortifacient) boiled over. The administration had to come out with a compromise that faces an uncertain future.

My Facebook page (I have friends of many political and religious persuasions) has become something between an echo chamber and a virtual battleground. The culture wars were revived – with a vengeance.

As so often happens in online media, no one was talking to ideological opponents. Instead, they were whipping up their respectvive posses.

In such an environment, biases are reinforced, not challenged.

As I watched the troops muster, arm and shoot their way across my Facebook ticker, I sat at my desk, grappling with my own ambivalence.

If pushed to describe my own position, I would describe myself as embracing the Catholic “web of life ethic.”

Viewed from that point of view, all human life is sacred, from cradle to grave.  If  it is taken, it should be consciously, and only in the most serious of circumstances.

From that vantage point, viewing a fetal ultrasound before choosing an abortion isn’t a bad idea.

But  I realize that, as uneasy and frankly sad I am about the millions of abortions performed every year, I can’t legislate the choices made by my fellow citizens.  Going back to a pre Roe v. Wade world is mostly likely impossible and perhaps even undesirable.

.And I know that I wasn’t alone.  Most of my Facebook friends were silent about the Komen drama.   If polls on the abortion question (s) are accurate, among them are many who, like me, find themselves conflicted, some personally, some on whether it is possible to legislates morality.

In a CBS-New York Times poll done last month, thirty seven percent of participants told pollsters that they favor stricter limits on abortion.  Another thirty-seven percent want abortion to be “generally available” and twenty-three percent would like it not to be permitted under any circumstances.  In another poll by those organizations done in September 2011, the number of respondents who advocated stricter limits was forty-two percent.

Yet while there is some polling evidence that the number of those who describe themselves as “pro-life” has increased, a November Pew Research Center poll indicates that majorities in all generational groups surveyed want abortion to remain legal.

In the executive summary of  the results of a survey done by the Public Religion Research Institute last fall that focused on the ”millennial” generation, the authors  argued that Americans have “complex and sometimes contradictory” view on the abortion question..

“Majorities of American simultaneously say an abortion Is morally wrong (52%) and that it should be legal in all or most cases (56%),” they said.

(U.S. President Barack Obama, flanked by Secretary of HHS Kathleen Sebelius, announced a turn-around in his policy on contraceptive care funding in the press room of the White House in Washington, February 10, 2012. REUTERS/Larry Downing)

Those who mostly strongly support abortion rights don’t generally seem to be gung-ho on abortion itself.  They are, however, passionate about choice.

Even the terms “pro-life” and “pro-choice” reveal our failure as a country to frame the issue in a constructive way.

If you are “pro-life,” does that mean that your opponents are political Voldemorts who oppose life in all of its forms?

Do “pro-choicers” truly believe that their adversaries in the culture wars are committed to disenfranchising women from making any and all decisions?

Wait, wait, don’t tell me…

Once upon a time (in the Clinton era) there was a discussion about how to foster an environment in which abortion rights proponents and their opponents would come together to find answers to the social issues behind many abortions.   Possibilities include providing better access to prenatal care, support for single mothers and fathers, making adoption easier (and less expensive), mental health and other family support services.

Of course, these don’t come cheap, the way that black-and-white rhetoric does.

It almost appears, a friend said to me recently, as though partisans in the abortion wars enjoy yelling at one another rather than working together to find a solution.

Meanwhile, many of us who openly wrestle with the complexities of public policy and private behavior find that in the current environment, those who grapple with doubts and shades of grey have few effective media voices.

And so we remain silent.  Silent, in part, because we aren’t convinced, like the partisans, that we have righteousness on our side.

Like the Germans and the British in World War I, the culture warriors lob grenades from their bunkers at the other side.  The moment we start to make progress on ending abortions is when they get tired of the battle and seek a truce.

That moment of reconciliation, sadly, seems far off.

Both sides are, at the moment, too invested in winning.

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(Cathedral of Our Lady — Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal — in Antwerp/Ad Meskens)

Belgian Catholics have petitioned their bishops for reforms including ordaining women and married men and allowing laymen to lead church services as ways to counter their growing shortage of priests.  The petition, handed over on Thursday, represented yet another challenge to the Belgian Church, deeply shaken by revelations of clerical sexual abuse that prompted police to raid its offices across the country for evidence of crimes last month.

The 8,235 signatories in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking half of the bilingual country, included politicians and intellectuals as well as about a 10th of all Flemish priests, deacons and lay Church workers. Their reform call echoes similar initiatives in Austria, Germany and Ireland. “The concerns and laments of Flemish believers exist in most if not all Western European countries,” the group Kerkenwerk (Work of the Churches) said in a statement about the petition entitled “Believers have their say”.

A steep decline in vocations in recent decades has left the Catholic Church in many Western countries with a mostly aged  clergy and few young priests available to replace them.  The Church’s response has been to close little-used churches and merge small parishes into larger ones, creating a regional staff of priests who minister to scattered congregations. These overworked priests cannot always visit villages every week to celebrate Sunday Mass or lead the baptisms, funerals and  other ceremonies that used to be a regular part of parish life.

(Saint Bavo Cathedral — Sint-Baafskathedraal — in Ghent, 13 July 2009/Mylius)

The Vatican has refused to scrap clerical celibacy or ordain women. Under Pope Benedict, it has begun limiting the role of lay people in the liturgy, especially women and girls, in the hope this will make the priesthood more attractive to young men.

“We do not understand why leadership of our local communities (for example, parishes) is not entrusted to a man or a woman, married or unmarried, employee or volunteer who has received the necessary training,” the petition declared. “We do not understand why these fellow believers should not preside at Sunday services,” it said, adding that lay people should be able to preach and distribute Communion and divorced and remarried people should be readmitted to the Eucharist.

“We also argue that both married men and women should be admitted to the priesthood within the shortest time. We believers now need them desperately,” it concluded.
Brussels Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard, head of the Belgian bishops conference, accepted the petition along with the Flemish bishops and thanked the group for its “quite critical but still churchly initiative”.

The group said its petition “is not an end, but only a beginning”. It said it wanted to work with the bishops to solve problems that increasingly frustrate practising Catholics.
Commenting on the petition, the Flemish Catholic weekly Tertio wrote that the priest shortage threatened the future of the Catholic faith. “Not only the institutions are in crisis – the ground on which they’ve been built is sinking away under our feet,” it wrote this week.

A similar reform initiative launched last summer in Austria has led to consultations with senior Church leaders there and a closed-door meeting of Austrian bishops with Vatican officials concerned that it could lead to a schism in the Church.

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(Libyan Sufi Muslims chant and beat drums during a procession to celebrate the birth of Prophet Mohammad, called Mawlid, along the main street in the old city in Tripoli, February 4, 2012. REUTERS/Ismail Zitouny)

Libyan Sufis staged a joyous parade through the heart of Tripoli on Saturday to mark the Prophet Mohammad’s birthday, defying radical Salafi Muslims pressuring them to scrap the centuries-old tradition. Chanting hymns to the beat of drums and cymbals, marchers choked the narrow alleys of the walled old town to celebrate the feast of Mawlid, a favourite event for the pious Sufis whose spirituality is an integral part of North African Islam.

The celebrations were the first since the fall last August of Muammar Gaddafi, who kept religion under firm control during his 42-year dictatorship, and went ahead despite concerns that hardliners might attack the marchers as heretics. The tension between the traditional Sufis and the Salafis, a group influenced by Saudi Wahhabis and other ultra-conservative foreign Islamists, has become a key divide in Libyan politics as parties begin to form to contest free elections in June.

(Men dance and play tambourines as they leave Zawiya Kabira at the start of one procession. Women watch from the balconies/Tom Heneghan)

“We fought the tyrant (Gaddafi) because he was a dictator and we don’t want anyone like him to govern us again,” said biology teacher Mohammad Aref. “We are the majority.” Emhemed Elashhab, the sheikh (Islamic scholar) at one Islamic school where marchers assembled, said there were fewer than 2,000 violent Islamists in Libya. “All normal people are against their ideas,” he said.

The turnout of marchers and onlookers may have reached a few thousand but it was impossible to estimate because processions snaked through the old town from three different locations and the marchers never assembled together in one place. But Sheikh Khaled Saidan, one of the organisers, said: “There are more people than we expected. We are very happy.”

“This year is different without the tyrant. There are large numbers of people, they are marching together to celebrate,” said Najat Al-Mughrabi, who was waiting with other women at a corner to watch their sons march by. She said she was not afraid of the extremists. “They couldn’t do anything before (under Gaddafi), how can they do anything now?” she asked.

(Mens display a flag from their Islamic school as they celebrate the birth of Prophet Mohammad, the feast of Mawlid, in the old city in central Tripoli, February 4, 2012. The flag describes God as the king and the truth (on the right side), and calls Mohammad truthful and trustworthy (on the left side). REUTERS/Anis Mili )

Sufism, a mystical strain among both Sunnis and Shi’ites, dates back to Islam’s early days. Apart from the standard prayers, Sufi devotions include singing hymns, chanting the names of God or dancing to heighten awareness of the divine. Sufis also build shrines to revered holy men and scholars and make pilgrimages to them. Hardline Islamists consider these practices grave sins that must be stopped, by force if needed. One night last month, extremists bulldozed through a wall of an old cemetery in the eastern city of Benghazi, destroyed its tombs and carried off 29 bodies of respected sages and scholars. They also demolished a nearby Sufi school.

“The extremists have taken advantage of the lack of order,” said Jamel Abdul Muhi. “Those who work in the dark are either bats or thieves. They are cowards.” Radical Islamist thinking came from abroad, Muhi said. “The mentality in Libya is moderate, we don’t have extremists here,” he said. “This is the historical nature of North Africa as a whole and as moderates we respect all opinions. There are lots of schools of Islam, this is human nature.”

(Men chant and beat drums during a procession for Mawlid along the main street in the old city in Tripoli. REUTERS/Ismail Zitouny )

Hisham Krekshi, deputy chairman of the Tripoli Local Council, expressed satisfaction the march was taking place peacefully despite concerns about reprisals from hardliners, who spread pamphlets in recent days urging people to shun the event. “This has been around for 14 centuries, you can’t stop it,” he said in one of the main souks, where the gold traders and cloth merchants had shut their shops for the day.

Even thought the Mawlid holiday passed without incident in the capital, Sufi leaders here say they remain concerned because many post-Gaddafi religious officials have Salafi leanings and have been appointing like-minded imams to mosques around the country. Salafi preaching is also widespread on Libyan television and radio, they say, which raises concerns among Sufis that they are being outflanked by a new and more political form of Islam.

(In the Zawiya Kabira during the morning prayer chanting session before the processions started/Tom Heneghan)

Festivities began with Sufi devotions in traditional Islamic schools in the old town. At Zawiya Kabira, the largest one, men chanted rounds of rousing hymns in an incense-filled room while other distributed almond milk and biscuits to those outside. Boys lit firecrackers as lines of men danced out of the school and down the alleys, with women watching from balconies and doorways as the procession passed.

“Beloved Prophet of God, be the enemy of all His enemies,” was one of the slogans they chanted in Sufi-style repetition. At one point, marchers spilled out onto Martyrs Square, the old Green Square where Gaddafi used to address his supporters.

Mawlid was celebrated as a major popular festival, with families stocking up on sweets on Friday and placing candles or illuminated artificial Christmas trees outside their homes, a traditional gesture to greet the holiday. Muslims stressed the trees were not a sign of Christmas commercialism reaching Libya, but used because they were decorated with lights.

(A girl holds candle by the doorstep during celebration on the eve of Prophet Mohammad's birthday in Tripoli, February 3, 2012. REUTERS/Anis Mili )

In the eastern city of Benghazi, hundreds of chanting Sufis  gathered at zawiyas across the city and then marched to a central square flanked by some 30 armed militiamen for security. Some passersby joined along the way. Jumaa Mohammed al-Sharif, a teacher in an Islamic school, said the procession was also a mark of defiance to those who had damaged the graves and destroyed a zawiya last month.

“You would not allow the grave of your father to be disrespected and in our religion we are not allowed to disrespect the graves of even non-Muslims,” he said. “We caught some people who destroyed the zawiya and who disrespected the graves and we handed them over to the authorities but we were surprised when we later learned that they had been released.”

Al-Sharif said a Sufi preacher, Tawfiq al-Nahly, had disappeared some two months ago and still nothing was known about what had happened to him. Kamal al-Feitouri, a teacher and imam said:  “The reason for the gathering is to celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed and to reject the disrespecting of the graves.” He said boy scouts and orphaned children had also joined the procession. “The celebration is for all Muslims, it is not just for Sufis,” he said.

(In the Zawiya Kabira in Tripoli during prayers before the procession/Tom Heneghan)

via Libyan Sufis mark Prophet’s birthday despite tension

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(Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow kneels before their NFL football game against New York Jets in Denver, Colorado, November 17, 2011. REUTERS/Rick Wilking)

He won’t be in this Sunday’s Super Bowl and his Denver Broncos are already 50-to-1 longshots for next year’s National Football League title, but if Tim Tebow swapped the pigskin for politics, he just might be a shoo-in for the White House.

Asked which NFL playoff quarterback they would choose for president of the United States in the coming election, more than one in four voters go for Tebow, according to the results of a new Reuters/Ipsos poll of likely voters released on Friday.

Tebow’s success on the field in the past few months helped to make him a media sensation as he turned a struggling Denver Broncos team around. His open and oft-professed religious faith gained him huge support in the evangelical community.

But perhaps it is his famous post-touchdown knelt-in-prayer pose – known as “Tebowing” – that has most inspired fans around the world. Many have posted pictures of themselves “Tebowing” on sites such as Tebowing.com.

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It took the jury in Kingston, Ontario some 15 hours to return a guilty verdict against three members of the Afghan-Canadian Shafia family in a case that shocked Canada and North America. Mohammad Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba Yahya, 42, and their 21-year-old son, Hamed, were sentenced to life imprisonment on Jan. 29 for the premeditated killing in 2009 of the couple’s three teenage daughters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, and that of Mohammad Shafia’s first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad. The Shafia girls wanted to live like ordinary Canadian teenagers, but their father viewed this lifestyle as a violation of his own interpretation of “honor.”

Honor-related crimes, often wrongly labeled an Islamic practice, take place in patriarchal communities where gender roles remain strictly divided and the interests of the community prevail over those of individuals, particularly women. A radical interpretation of Islam does at times provide religious cover for violence against women, and many of the 5,000 honor killings committed each year, according to United Nations estimates, take place in Muslim countries. But such practices persist in Sikh and Hindu communities as well, and only a few decades ago, crimes were still committed in the name of honor in Mediterranean countries like Italy, Spain and Greece.

In patriarchal communities, women are seen to embody the family’s honor, and thus are expected to be modest and obedient. But if honor-based violence goes back to the dawn of time in some parts of the world, tradition today often blends with modern factors — social, political or even economic — to create a potent, and at times lethal, mix. The murders that hit the headlines occur against a broader backdrop of honor-inspired coercion and domestic abuse. Identifying the warning signs and taking appropriate steps in time can protect lives. The Shafia girls, it appears, had reached out for help on several occasions, only to retreat when the authorities interviewed them in front of their parents.

Canada and North America are just beginning to identify and address honor-based crimes as specific forms of violence that require targeted policies, while European countries embarked on this learning curve in the past 15 years, collecting data and consulting with members of migrant communities to improve policies. The murder of Pela Atroshi in 1999 presented a major judicial challenge for Sweden: The 19-year-old was killed in Iraqi Kurdistan, where her family came from, but the crime had been planned by relatives living in Sweden and Australia. Determined prosecutors were able to bring a case against two of the perpetrators in Sweden, based on the testimony of the victim’s sister. In 2003, a British court imposed the first life sentence for an honor killing on Abdullah Yones, who, like Mohammad Shafia, killed his teenage daughter, 16-year-old Heshu. The case prompted the Metropolitan Police to set up a special department and order a review of dozens of homicides that had remained unsolved in the previous decade. In Germany, the murder in 2005 of a 25-year-old Turkish mother, Hatun Sürücü, which led to the arrest and trial of her brothers, also proved to be a turning point in the legal and social understanding of such crimes.

Identifying the patterns that may lead to honor killings is important for law enforcement and prevention purposes. Honor-related crimes differ from intimate-partner violence in that they are often organized and involve several of the victim’s relatives. They occupy the extreme end of a broad spectrum of patriarchal violence against women, a universal scourge that takes many forms worldwide.

But when individual murders committed in the name of honor are used to push an anti-immigration agenda or tar an entire culture or religion, they only serve to undermine the work of women’s rights activists who seek to challenge patriarchal prejudices from within these communities. If awareness of harmful practices against women has increased, it is largely through efforts of local activists in countries, or in migrant communities in the West, where honor killings take place. Westerners are not the only ones repelled by these brutal crimes.

Today, some commentators see the recent Canadian case as a sign that multiculturalism has failed. Allowing the likes of Mohammad Shafia to define norms for an entire nation or religious community ignores the common roots shared by perpetrators and victims: The latter are often equally proud of their ethnic, cultural or religious identity, but unlike their abusers or murderers, they focus on its positive aspects and merge them with the host culture.

Until recently, courts in Western countries accepted culture as a mitigating factor in honor killing trials, much to the consternation of women’s rights defenders, who felt justice was not properly served. That these patriarchal biases no longer apply is an important step forward.

The focus must now turn to prevention. Teachers, social workers and police officers need to be trained to detect early signs of domestic pressure and ensure that cries for help are heard and acted upon. Social workers with a good understanding of social relations in migrant communities need to be involved. Working with boys, too, is important. Hamed Shafia became an enforcer of his father’s authoritarian rule, but many other young men under pressure to police the behavior of female relatives struggle with these patriarchal expectations. Offering them adequate support can save the lives of potential victims and their own.

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(Golden angels attached at scaffolding are pictured during an exhibition in the Holy Cross church in Munich December 17, 2009. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle )

Mary Rich worked for a hospital in northern New Jersey for 25 years, first as a registered nurse and later as an executive. One of the job’s benefits was a traditional pension that she expected to receive at retirement. Now that benefit seems unlikely to be around by the time she retires.

Rich’s financially troubled former employer, the Hospital Center at Orange (HCO), shut down in 2004. The pension plan currently has .25 million in assets, which are being distributed at the rate of .7 million per year. By the time Rich reaches retirement 12 years from now, the money will be gone.

Under normal conditions, a pension plan such as HCO’s would have been back-stopped by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, the federally sponsored agency that insures most private sector pension plans. When plans go belly up, PBGC takes them over and continues to make payments; most participants receive 100 percent of promised benefits. But HCO’s case wasn’t typical. A year before it closed, HCO had declared itself to be a “church plan” – meaning that it was claiming an exemption to federal pension law and PBGC coverage.

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act, known as ERISA, regulates most private-sector pensions. But it has always exempted plans operated directly by churches for their clergy and employees to make it easier for the churches to operate their plans.

A 1980 amendment to ERISA clarified that the exemption also applied to church pension boards, which administer group pension plans for church employees. But since then, a growing number of plan sponsors with less-direct ties to religious organizations have been declaring themselves church plans and asking the Internal Revenue Service to issue private-letter rulings confirming the exemptions, which free the plans from federal funding requirements.

They can stop paying PBGC insurance premiums and can even receive a refund of up to six years of insurance premiums – probably a total of about 0,000 in HCO’s case. While that may have been a lot of money for a struggling hospital to recoup, it’s a disaster for workers relying on the pension plan, and it’s especially egregious considering that the cost of lifetime protection from PBGC is just per year per plan participant.

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