In the run-up to the American football Superbowl, which has
an unofficial reputation as a hotbed for
sex trafficking, police made extra efforts to clamp down on prostitution. They
arrested 45 people in four states for pimping, and also rescued 16 children who
were apparently being trafficked for sex; some had been reported as missing by
their families.
The BBC has reported that the United Nations’ Committee for the Rights of the Child has criticised the Vatican for its handling of the child sex abuse scandal “by adopting policies that allowed tens of thousands of children to be abused“. The following day, the BBC reported a Vatican priest criticising the Committee's report for “asserting themselves in areas where they have no competence.” The BBC failed to give any prominence to the fact that the report recommended that the Catholic Church change its teaching to support homosexual practice, abortion, and child sex, and this was what the priest was criticising. The report was also criticised for “peddling myths” about the child sex abuse scandal; for example, the report claims that the Vatican has dealt with alleged sex abusers in “confidential proceedings … which have allowed the vast majority of abusers … to escape judicial proceedings in states where abuses were committed.” An influential Catholic publication describes this as an “outrageous untruth”; in fact, proceedings under canon law are usually withheld until any civil law proceedings are completed. The publication acknowledges some truth in the report’s allegations up to the year 2000, but further criticises the report for failing to acknowledge or even commend the changes that the Church has made since then.
A Canadian man whose pregnant wife suffered a brain
haemorrhage and was declared brain dead has requested that doctors keep her on
life support until their baby can be born. “I just want to give the baby a
chance at life,” he said.
The Scottish Parliament ratified the Marriage (Same Sex
Couples) Bill by 105 votes to 18, and rejected proposed amendments designed to
protect civil liberties. A Scottish government spokesman said that the Scottish
Government “respected the decision” of those religious groups who did not want
to perform gay marriages and claimed that the existing legislation includes
protections “so that they can not be forced to take part.” However, given that
there have been attacks on civil liberties even before the legislation was
passed (such as a voluntary chaplain to Strathclyde Police being removed from
his post because he expressed support for traditional marriage in his blog),
the value and extent of these protections is not yet clear.
A researcher is about to publish a ten-year study on the
effects of religious faith on prisoners. His main finding was that prisoners
who come to faith “change identity … instead of thinking about their past in
terms of regrets, their criminal past somehow led them to the present.
Embracing faith made most of them hopeful that they could make real changes in
their lives” … although they were “surprisingly realistic about the challenges
they faced in the future.” He also discovered that male prisoners found group
religious meetings most helpful, while women valued personal time.
The Winter Olympics begin in the Russian town of Sochi this
week. Tennis star Maria Sharapova, who hails from Sochi, describes it as a
place where “you can swim in the Black Sea and on the same day drive an hour
into the mountains and go skiing.”
And finally, a woman in Washington DC noticed a pile of frozen
and filthy blankets on a bench. The blankets had obviously been slept in by a
homeless person, and were being put into a rubbish bag by a city worker. But when
the woman came past the next day, the blankets were back on the bench – freshly
laundered and neatly folded. Apparently the city of Washington has a program to
distribute blankets to the homeless through outlets other than traditional shelters.
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