Now that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has delivered its report condemning the Vatican for aiding, abetting & covering up the Church's sexual abuse scandal, WWPFD (What Will Pope Francis Do)?

Since Pope Francis (formerly Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina) took dominion over the Holy See, there has been much speculation about which direction he might move the Catholic Church; how he was going to modernize and make the Church more accessible to more people.

Liberals have lauded him for his comments about income inequality and his openness and apparent willingness to usher in a new way of going about the business of being Pope. Some conservatives, however, have scorned him for his economic pronouncements, while maintaining that he isn't focusing enough on such culture war issues as birth control, homosexuality, and abortion.

With so many difficult issues to deal with, he has recently been handed a golden opportunity to deal with one of the most vexing of those issues: Child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, and its aiding and abetting and subsequent cover-up by Catholic Church officials.

The most prudent move for Pope Francis to make in this regard is to accept the recommendations of the report by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and, at the same time, open up the Vatican archives.

Saturday, February 8, the Moral Monday's movement will surround the state capitol in Raleigh, North Carolina to protest the agenda of the Religious and business Right being rammed through the state legislature.

Building on years of work, in 2012, conservative Republicans took control of both houses of the North Carolina legislature as well as the governor's office.  The conservative coalition promptly did what one would expect -- they passed a budget that cut thousands of public school teachers and diverted funds to private school vouchers. They cut unemployment and Medicaid benefits -- and cut taxes for the wealthy.  They passed legislation aimed at suppression of minority voters and young people and reduced access to abortion services.

This is the result of a well focused strategy launched in the 1980s aimed at making policy in the states in ways that would generally not be possible in Washington, DC. Among the pieces of the strategy are two national networks of business/libertarian and Religious Right think tanks. This has been followed by an effort to take state legislatures and governorships to create at this point, 22 one-party conservative Republican states. (There are 12 Democratic one party states and the rest are mixed.) Much has been written about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the model bills it produces on behalf of right wing and corporate interests. But of course, the truth is that model bills cannot be passed unless you control legislatures and governorships.  And here we are.

A broad coalition of resistance in North Carolina led by religious leaders, notably Reverend William Barber II, head of the state's NAACP has risen to meet this challenge.  He has led more than 30 events called Moral Mondays in the capital city of Raleigh and in others across the state.

He has now invited the rest of us to join North Carolinians on February 8th in what he hopes will be the largest moral march since Martin Luther King Jr. led civil rights marchers from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965.

The Nation magazine claims the regions that are most obsessed with family values have the highest rates of family breakups.   We have heard for years that the rates of divorce among Christians are higher than the rates in the secular world.  The article in Nation says, "It looks as if right-wing Christianity itself  undermines modern marriage."

Now that Harold Camping, the failed End Times prognosticator, has left this mortal coil, it is up to other conservative Christian evangelicals to carry on the outrageous. And carrying on the outrageous appears to be one of Pastor Robert Jeffress' major talents, albeit doing it in a much more affable way than many of his comrades.

Jeffress has a new book in which he claims that President Barack Obama is paving the way for the Antichrist.

According to the Christian Post's Melissa Barnhart, Jeffress' book, "Perfect Ending: Why Your Eternal Future Matters Today," also "answers people's most pressing questions about heaven and what the end times will look like to Christians and those who do not believe in Jesus Christ."

If you know what's good for America, you will shut your door when the Girl Scouts come a knockin', and you'll "back away from those Girl Scout Cookies," conservative Christian groups are telling their constituents. It has nothing to do with evangelicals adopting gluten-free diets (although there is now a certified gluten-free Chocolate Chip Shortbread cookie), or concerns about eliminating fat from their diets. It's all about right-wingers charging Girl Scouts USA with supporting Planned Parenthood, pro-abortion role models like Hillary Clinton, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and organizations like Amnesty International, the ACLU, and the National Organization for Women (NOW).

And, now, thanks to the newly formed CookieCott 2014, Texas' Wendy Davis has been dropped into the middle of this year's ruckus.

An outbreak of common sense has struck parts of the South Dakota legislature.

Last week, the state Senate's Judiciary Committee voted 4-3 to reject a completely unnecessary bill that would have made it clear that clergy can't be forced to perform wedding ceremonies that violate their right of conscience.

There is a serious problem of human trafficking for purposes of sex and labor.  Particularly heinous is the trafficking in children. But urban legends that have been promoted by political leaders not withstanding, it does not exist in any greater degree around major sporting events like the Super Bowl than at any other time of year.

A number of media outlets have continued to spread the urban legend -- which was debunked in a 75 page report (PDF) by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women in 2011. Advocates for sex workers and exploited children say that the claim that the Superbowl attracts unusual amounts of prostitution is still a myth and that politicians, law enforcement and even the New York City area Roman Catholic Church are overreacting.  

While there is much more to say about all this, let's take this moment to note that there are voices of the victims and advocates like the  Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Christa Brown of StopBaptistPredators, and Dylan Farrow who deserve to be heard when the distractions of the Super Bowl are over.  Let's point out that there are prominent religious leaders who have enabled or covered up for perpetrators. Some of these are also leaders of the Christian Right who claim to promote "family values."  One culture warring cleric, Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City, has even been convicted of failing to report the suspected crimes of a priest under his supervision who ultimately got 50 years in prison.  Finn remains in office.

A current article in Slate Magazine includes a map of the schools in the U.S. teaching creationism while receiving taxpayer funded vouchers or "scholarships."  A substantial number of Pennsylvania schools that both teach creationism and receive public funding through "school choice" programs were not included on that map.  It will be important to keep updating the map to include all of the programs that divert public funds to private schools, and to emphasize that the public-funded teaching of creationism is not limited to the South. [Graphic at right is title of a chapter on creationism in A Beka's Matter & Motion in God's Universe textbook.]

This is crossposted from Eyes Right, the blog of Political Research Associates, where I will be doing a series of posts on the Christian Right and child sex abuse. -- FC

The exposure of widespread sex abuse by Roman Catholic clergy--and of the subsequent cover-ups by church leaders--has rocked the Catholic church for more than a decade. Less well known, though closely analogous, is the issue of widespread abuse within Protestant evangelical churches.  Such stories raise doubt that the evangelical/Catholic alliance that defines the contemporary Christian Right is, in any legitimate sense, a defender of "family values."

Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, DC recently set off a firestorm by accepting a $1 million grant for its new School of Business and Economics from the Charles Koch Foundation.  Progressive minded organizations such as Faith in Public Life called on CUA to return the money, noting how Charles Koch's extreme libertarianism is far out of step with Catholic social teaching on economics.

Many on the Catholic Right responded by slamming Faith in Public Life  for being funded in part by philanthropist George Soros, who they point out is an atheist. But if George Soros' belief (or in his case, non-belief) is in play, why isn't the same standard applied to Charles Koch?

Today, anti-abortion activists and advocates will once gather at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for its annual "March for Life." This year, there is un-likely to be any hitches in the giddy-up of the marchers, and the chanting from the crowd is apt to be louder than ever. That's because this year's "March for Life," held on the 41st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 ruling which deemed abortion a fundamental right under the U.S. Constitution, is being staged against the backdrop of a wave of anti-abortion legislative victories in the states.

And many movement activists see these victories as paving the way to even more limits on access to abortion.

For more than forty years, the movement has had one goal in mind: an outright ban on all abortions.

It's no surprise when Glenn Beck promotes G. Edward Griffin's book, The Creature from Jekyll Island, but a bit more shocking when PBS NewsHour casually introduces the book to its audience without caveats. I've had several conversations over the last week with progressives who were impressed with the NewsHour presentation on Chris Martenson, co-founder of the blog Peak Prosperity. But there was a big red waving flag in the interview that should have been a warning to progressives - the interviewees' fascination with Griffin's Federal Reserve conspiracy tome. Liberals beware.  Shared complaints do not equal shared agendas.  Yes, Willie Nelson and Ron Paul are on the back cover of the wildly popular book, but buying into its premise may result in being "political bedfellows" with the John Birch Society and its conspiratorial worldview.