Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category
May 16th, 2012 | 
Author: Among the most odious of the recent example of rampant corruption and greed involved the U.S. retail giant Wal-Mart. Walmart’s Mexico branch has been under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission since December of last year.
Wal-Mart’s Mexico has been the subject of a report published last month in The New York Times, which alleged the company paid $24 million in bribes to facilitate the construction of new stores, in a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
The company had allegedly engaged in widespread and systematic bribery in this country. But the Mexican Attorney-General’s Office only opened an investigation after it was published.
Mexico has ratified the United Nations Convention against Corruption and the Inter-American Convention against Corruption, as well as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.
Mexico is also a member of the U.N. Global Compact, which is the world’s largest corporate responsibility initiative. Launched in 2000, the UNGC has over 8,000 participants, most of them businesses, in more than 135 countries, and local networks in over 90 nations. The 10 universal principles it upholds relate to human rights, labor law, environmental standards and the fight against corruption.
“It is important to use these mechanisms to expose human rights violations committed by companies, and to demonstrate that regulations need to be stricter,” Valeria Scorza, head of the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Project (ProDESC) says.
But “we criticize the lack of mechanisms to sanction member companies for non-compliance, or to secure reparations for damage. The principles should be reformulated to pack more punch, although this is a fairly difficult collective process and companies usually have no interest in it,” she said.
ProDESC has persistently denounced violations of labor rights at Wal-Mart, which was founded in the United States in 1962 and entered the Mexican market in 1991.
Wal-Mart is not the only company to have been involved in corruption scandals. Various studies in the past few years have revealed the tangled web that is debilitating Mexico with enormous economic and social costs.
A version of this story was first published by Inter Press Service news agency.
© 2012, Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.
Posted in 
Story By: Talk of the Nation
John Allen, senior correspondent, National Catholic Reporter
Sister Simone Campbell, executive director, NETWORK
Donna Bethell, chairman of the board of directors, Christendom College
The Vatican reprimanded America’s largest organization of Catholic nuns, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The Holy See charged the LCWR with promoting programs with “radical feminist themes” that are incompatible with doctrine on issues ranging from homosexuality to women’s ordination.
The latest findings back up previous studies that have also suggested a link between increased physical activity and a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s. The most recent study differs from others in that researchers included an objective measurement of people’s activity levels.
The study included 716 older people, whose average age 82. Patients in the test study wore a device called an actigraph, which monitors movement and activity, on their non-dominant wrist continuously for 10 days.
Test subjects also took annual cognitive tests to measure memory and thinking abilities. None of the study participants had dementia at the beginning of the study.
Over the 3.5 year study, 71 participants develop Alzheimer’s. The intensity of a person’s physical activity also made a difference in the risk of developing Alzheimer’s. The people in the bottom 10 percent of intensity of physical activity were 2.8 times as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease as people in the top percent of the intensity of physical activity.
As the actigraph was worn on the wrist, activities such as cooking and playing cards were beneficial, Buchman said.
“These results provide support for efforts to encourage all types of physical activity even in very old adults who might not be able to participate in formal exercise, but can still benefit from a more active lifestyle,” Buchman said.
One in eight people in the U.S. over age 65 has Alzheimer’s disease. The number of Americans older than 65 years of age will reach nearly 80 million by 2030.
“Our study shows that physical activity, which is an easily modifiable risk factor, is associated with cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. This has important public health consequences,” Buchman said.
“The results of our study indicate that all physical activities including exercise as well as other activities such as cooking, washing the dishes, and cleaning are associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease. These results provide support for efforts to encourage all types of physical activity even in very old adults who might not be able to participate in formal exercise, but can still benefit from a more active lifestyle.
“This is the first study to use an objective measurement of physical activity in addition to self-reporting. This is important because people may not be able to remember the details correctly,” Buchman added.
© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.
“The absence of the negative is not the same thing as the presence of the positive. We found that factors such as optimism, life satisfaction, and happiness are associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease regardless of such factors as a person’s age, socioeconomic status, smoking status, or body weight,” lead author Julia Boehm, research fellow in the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health says.
“For example, the most optimistic individuals had an approximately 50 percent reduced risk of experiencing an initial cardiovascular event compared to their less optimistic peers.”
Each of the 200 research papers studied differing emotional states using questionnaires and assessments to score patients in the study.
They measured the extent to which individuals consider themselves a happy or unhappy person, satisfaction with their life and the extent to which they experience pleasurable feelings.
Always examined was optimism and hope in individual patients, and the extent to which individuals have expectancies for positive outcomes in the future.
Senior author Laura Kubzansky, associate professor of society, human development, and health at Harvard, said there are psychological assets, like optimism and positive emotion, which afford protection against cardiovascular disease. Such factors protect people against heart attacks and strokes and also slowed the progression of heart disease and other diseases in patients who had already developed them.
The research showed that people with a positive outlook on life and who were optimistic about the future tended to lead healthier lives overall.
People with upbeat attitudes were more likely to exercise, eat a good balanced die, and get enough sleep. Yet even when these factors were accounted for, the happier people were still less likely to develop cardiovascular disease.
It’s generally believed that a positive attitude to life makes people more resilient to stress and helps them recover more quickly after things like preparing for a speech, the researchers said.
“The association between heart disease and mental health is very complex and still not fully understood,” Maureen Talbot, Senior Cardiac Nurse at the British Heart Foundation says.
“Although this study didn’t look at the effects of stress, it does confirm what we already know which is that psychological wellbeing is an important part of a healthy lifestyle, just like staying active and eating healthily.
“It also highlights the need for healthcare professionals to provide a holistic approach to care, taking into account the state of someone’s mental health and monitoring its effect on their physical health,” she added.
© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.
Harrison claims the dangerous driving he has witnessed while biking on the roads is by cell phone users.
“[It] is not by people who are eating things or combing their hair or putting on lipstick,” Harrison told reporters. “It’s by people who are talking on a cell phone and not seeing me.”
Under the new law, drivers are allowed to make some calls, such as emergency calls or calls to a spouse, parent or child.
Some have pointed out that Chapel Hill may not actually have the authority to issue such a ban. Assistant Attorney General Jess Mekeel says that state law would trump any laws the town enacts.
The state of North Carolina has outlawed texting while driving and drivers under 18 are banned from all cell phone use. However, there are no state laws against adults driving while talking, whether they’re hands-free or not. Does Chapel Hill have the right to push it a little further within their town? The courts may end up having to decide.
The loophole, the one that allows you to call a parent, spouse or child will make it difficult for law enforcement officers to find out which potential offenders have been speaking to. The police chief says that officers will have to search a driver’s phone to see who they’re talking to – and need a heavy burden of proof for that.
The National Transportation and Safety Board called for a total ban on cell phone use while driving at the end of last year. According to the CDC, more than 1,200 people are injured in distracted driving accidents every day.
© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.
Don’t blame Islam for the Toulouse killingsEd West ("The Telegraph," March 21, 2012)
Itâs always a mistake to comment on terrorist atrocities before all the facts are clear. Last summer when news emerged of a bomb attack in Norway, a country embroiled in the 2005 cartoon saga and with troops serving in Afghanistan, many assumed that the perpetrators must be Islamic.
Seven years earlier the murderous attack on Madrid was at first blamed on ETA, and the Spanish governmentâs wrong call helped lose them the election. Further back the Oklahoma bombing of 1995 was initially thought to be the work of Islamic radicals, who had bombed the World Trade Centre just two years earlier.
Itâs easy to get it wrong because so many of the worldâs varied extremists, whatever their motivation and however much they might hate each other, focus their anger and loathing on similar targets â the state, the city, modernity, capitalism, and the one group who embody all these complicating, unsettling changes in the minds of lonely, failed young men â Jews.
People often make the wrong call because thatâs what they want to believe, because it fits into their narrative. The recent shootings in Toulouse are a case in point. Todayâs Guardian editorial, for example, draws from this tragedy the following conclusion:
Campaigning has been suspended, but the shooting has already sent tremors through France’s presidential election. The first to say what was on everyone’s mind was not the Socialist challenger François Hollande but the centrist François Bayrou. He said the killings were the product of a sick society, with politicians who pointed the finger and inflamed passions. No prize for guessing whom he was talking about. Nicolas Sarkozy’s lurch to the right has included such claims as there being too many immigrants in France, and that the French were secretly ingesting halal meat. Alain Juppé, the foreign minister, fought back by declaring that Bayrou’s statement was ignoble. But it is must already be clear this part of the incumbent’s re-election campaign is dead. Currying votes from the extreme right is a two-edged sword, and Sarkozy could be about to feel its blade. The minister who has been most shamelessly xenophobic, Claude Guéant, is now the man in charge of the manhunt.
They are not the only ones. Yesterdayâs Independent posed the question: âDid Sarkozyâs far-right rhetoric fan flames of ethnic hatred?â
No. So rather than these killings being a spur to countless reports on white terror by the BBC, always keen to warn of the dangers of xenophobia, state media is now quoting various Muslim leaders saying that this has nothing to do with Islam.
I agree. Many people kill in the name of jihad but they do not represent Islam or Muslims, the vast majority of whom will be horrified by the Toulouse killings. It is not religion that turns some young Muslim men in the West violent, but the sense of alienation and frustration that inevitably comes from being a second-generation immigrant. Confused and angry young men easily attach themselves to something greater than themselves, especially a strong, confident inter-national identity historically opposed to the West from which they feel so rejected.
Many of the campaigners who earlier blamed these attacks on a xenophobic atmosphere across Europe are now very keen to point out that they are nothing to do with Islam. Not because they care about Islam, but because their faith is âdiversityâ, the catchy term for universalism, the idea that all limits to human altruism are immoral.
Universalism is the basis of the post-war European moral settlement, and it has motivated two of its great revolutions â European integration and the creation of multi-ethnic societies. This followed two appalling nationalist-fuelled wars, and Europeâs universalist leaders believe that nations âlead to warâ, in the words of EU President Herman Van Rompuy. Any opposition to universalism, whether to trans-national governments or open borders, is therefore racism, xenophobia or âfar-Right rhetoricâ.
And yet, as GK Chesterton put it, to condemn patriotism because people go to war for patriotic reasons, is like condemning love because some love leads to murder.
Islam is not to blame for the Toulouse killings. But had it been the work of white extremists, neither would patriotism have been the problem.
The European elite still uses the word patriotism, of course, but they mean patriotism for an idea â tolerance, fair play or other supposed national values â rather than in its truer sense of an exclusionary love of one’s homeland and a wish to be around people like ourselves.
This feeling, shared by almost all of humanity and most certainly ingrained, Western metropolitan elites cannot comprehend â which is why they take such joy when its more extreme adherents prove to be violent, hate-filled psychopaths. It is easier to see those aberrations as the norm, rather than recognise their views as being the pathological variation of a healthy, universal human need for âdiscriminating altruismâ.
You cannot buck human nature, and universalism is an unsustainable, unworkable idea based on a utopian vision of humanity. One of the sadder ironies is that it is motivated partly by our revulsion over the Holocaust, yet this idea has helped to introduce Middle Eastern anti-Semitism into Europe (although I should add a caveat, that this may be exaggerated in some peopleâs imaginations. Jews and Muslims rub along perfectly well in north London, where I live, and itâs wrong to see European Muslims as raving anti-Semites).
But at the same time this universalism has become the moral basis for a worldwide intellectual assault on the state of Israel, whose citizens are charged with the crime of wishing to form a separate, Jewish state, an idea called âapartheidâ by Europeans who have the moral good luck to be able to voice such absurdities without facing any consequences.
People should reconsider this idea, but as for the tragedy in France, it does not say anything about Islam, only of human nature and its potential for evil. All that matters ultimately is that three innocent children, a father and three young soldiers are now dead.
According to police, Zimmerman, who maintained he shot the teen in self-defense, told local police that Martin punched him in the face, climbed on top of him and slammed his head into the sidewalk, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
However — despite being told by a dispatcher not to follow the teen, Zimmerman left his car and approached Martin. Neighbors called 911 to report hearing gunshots. When police arrived, Zimmerman admitted shooting the unarmed teen. Zimmerman has neither been arrested nor charged.
Many have called for Zimmerman’s arrest. Still others have come to Zimmerman’s defense, saying he is an “admirable person,” and that safety, not race, was his main concern that night. Zimmerman’s lawyer has also spoken out against critics who have claimed his client is racist.
Among the evidence presented, there is a reported one-minute gap between when Zimmerman made the 911 call and when he came face-to-face with Martin. Police say they’re not sure what happened.
Zimmerman told officers that he lost sight of the teen and was returning to his SUV when Martin approached him and they exchanged words. He said Martin asked if he had a problem, Zimmerman replied no and reached for his cell phone. He then alleges that Martin said “well you do now” and punched him in the nose.
Zimmerman says he fell to the ground and Martin got on top of him and began slamming his head into the sidewalk. Zimmerman said he began yelling for help.
Someone can be heard screaming on the 911 audio; however, there’s been a dispute amongst witnesses as to whether it was Zimmerman or Martin who was crying for help.
Zimmerman then reportedly shot Martin at close range. When the local police arrived at the scene, they found Zimmerman with a bloody nose, swollen lip and lacerations in the back of his head. Although paramedics gave him first aid, he said he did not need to go to the hospital and sought medical treatment the next day.
The incident has prompted a lot of misguided commentary from various media pundits. Famous TV journalist Geraldo Rivera declared “I am urging the parents of black and Latino youngsters particularly to not let their children go out wearing hoodies,” Rivera said on “Fox & Friends” last Friday. “I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was.”
Rivera has since apologized for the comment.
© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.
GUANAJUATO,Mexico (Catholic Online) – We present for our readers around the globe the Vatican translation of the encouraging words that Pope Benedict XVI offered to thousands of enthusiastic Mexican children this weekend during his visit:
Dear Young People,
I am happy to be able to meet with you and to see your smiling faces as you fill this beautiful square. You have a very special place in the Pope’s heart. And in these moments, I would like all the children of Mexico to know this, especially those who have to bear the burden of suffering, abandonment, violence or hunger, which in recent months, because of drought, has made itself strongly felt in some regions.
I am grateful for this encounter of faith, and for the festive and joyful presence expressed in song. Today we are full of jubilation, and this is important. God wants us to be happy always. He knows us and he loves us. If we allow the love of Christ to change our heart, then we can change the world. This is the secret of authentic happiness.
This place where we stand today has a name which expresses the yearning present in the heart of each and every person: “la paz,” Peace. This is a gift which comes from on high. “Peace be with you” (Jn 20:21). These are the words of the Risen Lord. We hear them during each Mass, and today they resound anew in this place, with the hope that each one of you will be transformed, becoming a sower and messenger of that peace for which Christ offered his life.
The disciple of Jesus does not respond to evil with evil, but is always an instrument of good instead, a herald of pardon, a bearer of happiness, a servant of unity. He wishes to write in each of your lives a story of friendship. Hold on to him, then, as the best of friends. He will never tire of speaking to those who always love and who do good. This you will hear, if you strive in each moment to be with him who will help you in more difficult situations.
I have come that you may know my affection. Each one of you is a gift of God to Mexico and to the world. Your family, the Church, your school and those who have responsibility in society must work together to ensure that you receive a better world as your inheritance, without jealousies and divisions.
That is why I wish to lift up my voice, inviting everyone to protect and to care for children, so that nothing may extinguish their smile, but that they may live in peace and look to the future with confidence.
You, my dear young friends, are not alone. You can count on the help of Christ and his Church in order to live a Christian lifestyle. Participate in Sunday Mass, in catechesis, in apostolic works, looking for occasions of prayer, fraternity and charity.
Blessed Cristóbal, Antonio and Juan, the child martyrs of Tlaxcala, lived this way, and knowing Jesus, during the time of the initial evangelization of Mexico, they discovered that there is no greater treasure than he. They were children like you, and from them we can learn that we are never too young to love and serve.
How I would like to spend more time with all of you, but the time has already come for me to go. We will remain close in prayer. So I invite you to pray continually, even in your homes; in this way, you will experience the happiness of speaking about God with your families. Pray for everyone, and also for me.
I will pray for all of you, so that Mexico may be a place in which everyone can live in serenity and harmony. I bless all of you from my heart and I ask you to bring the affection and blessing of the Pope to your parents, brothers and sisters, and other loved ones. May the Virgin accompany you. Thank you very much, my dear young friends.
Survivors Desperately Seek Loved Ones in Jos, Nigeria Blast("Compass Direct News," March 13, 2012)
Jos, Nigeria – One man rendered a widower by the Islamist suicide bombing at a Catholic church on Sunday (March 11) discovered his wife had been killed only after finding her severed hand with her wedding ring on it.
Another could identify his wife only by the clothing left on her remains.
Both women, 52-year-old Rose Dominic Dung Tari, and 50-year-old Roseline Kumbo Pam, had given birth to five children; the two victims were neighbors, their homes separated only by an apartment between them. They were two of the nine Christians confirmed killed â including two Boy Scouts, ages 8 and 16, helping security personnel keep the assailants outside the church compound gate â in the bombing by Islamic extremists reportedly from the Boko Haram sect.
Pamâs husband, Sunday Davou Pam, told Compass that before leaving for the service at St. Finbarrâs Catholic Church, his wife was preoccupied with preparations for her brotherâs wedding that morning and helping him settle with his bride-to-be.
âI was in a meeting at the back of the church in the menâs fellowship meeting when the blast went off,â Pam said. âAnd when we heard a loud explosion, we all rushed to the front of the church, only to find the dead bodies of many of our members lying scattered across the street. There were also many injured who were crying for help.â
His wife, however, was nowhere to be found. He tried calling her cell phone, but it went unanswered, he said.
âI phoned her four times and still got no response,â Pam said. âMy friend, David Dung, was also searching for his wife, Regina, and eventually found her dead body, but my wife was nowhere to be found.â
The suicide bombers had detonated the explosives after security personnel stopped them at the gate of the church compound, killing mainly people outside the sanctuary â some instantly, and others later in hospitals, including an 8-year-old boy who succumbed to his injuries at 1 a.m. today, according to church sources. After a desperate search, Pam finally found his wifeâs remains.
âI saw a dead body with no arms, and the lower part of the body was also blown off to pieces,â he said. âI also saw a hand that had a ring on its finger. The hand was that of my wife. That is how I found the partial part of her body and collected it for burial.â
Pam said his wife was a leader of the womenâs fellowship in the parish and community. They had been married for 32 years.
Searching Morgues
Dominic Dung Tari told Compass that his wife, Rose, had only one thing on her mind before leaving for church that morning â money for the Sunday service offering. He was staying home ill with a fever, and she asked him for money.
âI could not give her the money she requested because I did not have a dime on me,â Tari said. âI asked our son whether he could spare us some little amount to enable their mother to have something to give as offering in the church, but he too had only 500 naira. So, she left for the church without having anything to offer as offering.â
Still at home at the time of the blast, Tari rushed out when he heard the explosion. Growing more anxious each minute that his wife did not call him, shaken, he ran to the church site. Unable to find her, he returned home.
âJust when I returned to my house, my mobile phone rang and I quickly grappled with it to receive the call, but then it was not from my wife,â he said. âI was told there is a corpse among the dead that resembles my wife. I raced back again to the church.â
Emergency rescue workers, however, had already taken the body along with others to the morgue, he said. He set out on the task of visiting morgues.
âI went âround the various hospitals â JUTH [Jos University Teaching Hospital], Plateau Specialist Hospital, and the Air Force Military Hospital â in all these hospitals, I could still not find my wifeâs corpse,â Tari said.
With the help of family members, her remains were finally located at the Plateau State Specialist Hospital morgue, he said.
âThe corpse had no head, no legs and was in pieces,â he said. âWe only identified those pieces of human flesh as hers because of the clothes she wore.â
Her remains were buried yesterday at her familyâs house.
âMy wife was a devout Christian,â Tari said. âShe was a member of the global ministries team and a very prayerful woman. To us, she was a mother, a sister, and a wife I so much loved.â
He said the attacks on Christians in Nigeria amount to a war waged by Muslim extremists against Christians. Sundayâs attack followed a Feb. 26 bomb blast outside the church walls of a Church of Christ in Nigeria service that killed at least three Christians (see www.compassdirect.org, âSuicide Bombers Attack Worship Service in Jos, Nigeria,â Feb. 26).
âI am an ex-service man [retired military] â I know what a war is,â he said. âWhat is happening in Nigeria today is a war against the church. We need to fight back spiritually, as this is the only way we as Christians can survive it.â
Death Toll
Among those killed in the in the blast, church sources said, was Tari Benjamin, who would have been 9 years old on March 26. Emmanuel David, 16, who like Tari was a Boy Scout helping to secure the church compound, was also killed in the blast.
Tariâs mother, Rose Benjamin, told Compass that her son died this morning at about 1 a.m. in the Intensive Care Unit of Jos University Teaching Hospital from burns from the bomb attack.
Besides the two boys and Rose Dominic Dung Tari, Roseline Kumbo Pam, and Regina David Dung, other church members killed in the blast were Emmanuel Kanke, Henry Chuwang, Matthew Dalyop and Ahmadu Choji.
Rose Benjamin said her 8-year-old son had a premonition he was about to die.
âHe returned to the house after attending the Sunday school class, and then while placing his hands on my shoulders, told me he was returning to the church for his last duty,â she said. âI did not understand what he meant by that â not until he died this morning did his last moment with me that Sunday morning come to memory.â
Tari, the second of three children and known to be a hard-working and intelligent pupil at school, had left for church wearing his Boys Scout uniform and joined other Scouts, she said.
âThey were working alongside security men, screening worshippers before allowing them entry into the church, before the suicide bombers crashed into them when they refused to allow them into the church,â she said.
While church member accounts varied as to whether there were two or three bombers in the car, they agreed that one of them was disguised as a woman, wearing a wig.
Several members of the church were still missing â not located among the wounded in hospitals or among the dead in morgues. Their relatives said they fear they may have been obliterated when the bombs went off; emergency rescue workers have collected bags of human body parts.
The body of 16-year-old Emmanuel David, an orphan whose father died in 2007, was found under debris of the church gate, said his uncle, Raphael Elisha Davou, 60.
âHe and others refused to allow the bombers into the church premises,â Davou said. âTheir refusal to allow the bombers into the church forced the bombers to detonate the bomb outside the church gate. It was the impact of the explosion that crashed the car into the gate and killed the youths and other security men with them. They died to save many other members of the church.â
Boko Haram, the name given to the Islamic extremist group officially called Jamaâatu Ahlis Sunna Liddaâawati Wal-Jihad â âThe People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophetâs Teachings and Jihadâ â seeks to impose a strict version of sharia (Islamic law) on Nigeria. The name Boko Haram translates loosely as âWestern education is forbidden.â
Nigeriaâs population of more than 158.2 million is divided between Christians, who make up 51.3 percent of the population and live mainly in the south, and Muslims, who account for 45 percent of the population and live mainly in the north. The percentages may be less, however, as those practicing indigenous religions may be as high as 10 percent of the total population, according to Operation World.
Subsequent Violence
Apart from the bombing deaths, confusion is growing about subsequent violence.
While some state health and police sources have reported unconfirmed âreprisalâ attacks against Muslims, witnesses have reported additional deaths of Christians at the hands of military personnel. Compass sources said soldiers killed four Christians when youths confronted them, asking them to leave the city because they had allowed suicide bombers to carry out attacks on churches.
The Jos-based Stefanos Foundation reported soldiers arriving at the church as people were searching for loved ones and opening fire on the crowd, killing several. Local press reported Special Task Force soldiers rushing to the scene of the blast and trying to control protestors by opening fire. Plateau state police spokesman Samuel Dabai reportedly said at least 10 people were killed and at least 10 others injured from the military action.
When Compass visited the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH) and the Plateau State Specialist Hospital yesterday, authorities confirmed 17 corpses in their morgues. Dr. Ishaya Pam, chief medical director at JUTH, said the hospital had received seven bodies and âabout 12â injured persons, while Dr. Bitrus Matawal, medical director of Plateau Specialist Hospital, said there were 10 corpses in the hospitalâs morgue brought from the church and seven injured Christians receiving treatment.
The Rev. Ignatius Kaigama, archbishop of the Catholic Diocese of Jos, appealed for calm on the part of Christians, saying God was not unaware of their suffering.
âWe have a faith that preaches the respect of the sanctity of the human life,â Kaigama said. âWe have a faith and have the ability to reason. So, we must not behave like those who believe they are serving God by killing others.â
Link Between Religion and Politics is More Prevalent in GOP PrimariesGary Langer ("ABC News," March 16, 2012)
USA – The link between religion and politics thatâs motivated many Republican primary voters this year is far less prevalent in public attitudes more broadly: Instead nearly six in 10 Americans express disinterest in whether a presidential candidate shares their religious views.
More than six in 10 in this ABC News/Washington Post poll also say political leaders should not rely on their religious beliefs in making policy decisions. And fewer than four in 10 say the country has gone too far in separating church and state; rather thereâs been a modest increase since the 1990s in the number who see too much mixing of religion and government.
In two other issues related to religious sentiment for some Americans, more than half of the public overall continues to support gay marriage (52 percent) and to back legal abortion in all or most cases (54 percent).
On questions for which comparable data are available, results among all adults are far different from those found by exit polls in the Republican presidential primaries to date:
⢠In the 10 states in which the question has been asked, 64 percent of Republican primary voters have said it matters to them that a presidential candidate shares their religious beliefs. Among all Republicans in this national survey, that drops to 53 percent; among all Americans, 42 percent.
The number in the primaries includes 32 percent who say that shared religious beliefs matter âa great dealâ to them, peaking at 47 percent in Mississippi, 46 percent in Alabama and 43 percent in Tennessee. Nationally, among all Republicans, itâs 23 percent; among all adults, 17 percent.
⢠In the 12 states where exit polls have asked it, 62 percent of Republican primary voters have said abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, rising to about seven in 10 in Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee. That compares with 56 percent among all Republicans nationally, and 43 percent among all adults.
CHURCH/STATE â In response to another question, not asked in the exit polls, 36 percent of Americans say the country has gone too far in keeping religion and government separate, leaving 60 percent who instead say itâs either struck a good balance (34 percent) or gone too far in mixing religion and government (25 percent). The latter is up by 7 points from a 1994 poll, while âgood balanceâ is down by 6.
At the same time, more see too little confluence of church and state than too much, by 11 points.
Thereâs a 2-1 division in this survey, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, on whether political leaders should or should not rely on their religious beliefs in their policy decision-making. Thirty-one percent say they should do so; 63 percent say not. Preference to keep religious beliefs out of policy decisions has ranged from 55 to 66 percent in ABC/Post polls since 2005.
While the latter two questions have not been asked in exit polls, results among population groups also show divisions, sharpest among evangelicals white Protestants and conservative Republicans compared with others. Desire for political leaders to rely on their religious beliefs peaks at 50 percent of evangelical white Protestants and conservative Republicans; itâs 27 percent among all others.
Similarly, the view that the separation of church and state has âgone too farâ is expressed by 61 percent of conservative Republicans and 58 percent of evangelical white Protestants; that falls to about half as many other adults. (Conservative Republicans account for 16 percent of all adults; evangelical white Protestants for 17 percent. They overlap; a third of conservative Republicans are also evangelical white Protestants.)
On the abortion and gay marriage questions, support peaks among liberal Democrats, at 77 and 74 percent, respectively. Theyâre about as different from all other Americans on these issues as are conservative Republicans on their side. On the church/state questions, thereâs less difference among liberal Democrats vs. others than there is among conservative Republicans. (Liberal Democrats account for 14 percent of the population, about the same share as their political opposites.)
While differences are sharpest using religion, ideology and partisanship as a filter, there are some others as well. For example, support for gay marriage peaks at 61 percent among adults under age 40, falling to 40 percent among those 65 and older.
Also notable are the results among political independents, key swing voters in national elections. They resemble Democrats much more than Republicans on the church-state related questions in this survey, a result that suggests general election challenges for a more religiously aligned candidate such as Rick Santorum. In a head-to-head matchup, Santorum leads Obama by 17 points among registered voters looking for a candidate who shares their religious beliefs. Among the nearly six in 10 who say this doesnât matter, Obama leads by an identical 17 points.
METHODOLOGY â This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone March 7-10, 2012, among a random national sample of 1,003 adults, including landline and cell-phone-only respondents. Results have a margin of sampling error of 4 points for the full sample. The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., with sampling, data collection and tabulation by Abt-SRBI of New York, N.Y.