The uproar came a day before Germany’s highest bishop was to meet Pope Benedict XVI in Rome.

Germany’s top education representative, Ludwig Spaenle, blasted the church for failing to report cases of physical and sexual abuse in a timely fashion.

“Internal church guidelines as well as school authority directives to report criminal offenses instantly have been circumvented,” Spaenle, who is president of Germany’s 16 education ministers, was quoted as saying by the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper. Church officials need to put “everything on the table.”

Spaenle and his colleagues set up a task force to come up with a new strategy against sexual abuse in schools.

“For us there is ‘zero tolerance’ for the perpetrators,” he said in a statement Thursday.

At least 170 former students from Catholic schools in Germany have come forward with claims of sexual abuse recently and others have spoken of physical abuse.

Wolfgang Blaschka, a 52-year-old graphic designer, told The Associated Press that corporate punishment was the rule, not the exception, when he was a student at the Etterzhausen school just outside Regensburg.

“It was a climate of terror and oppression,” he told the AP, saying one principal grabbed him by the hair and “lifted me into the air.”

Blaschka spent two years at the school before joining the prestigious Regensburger Domspatzen Choir in 1968, which was led by the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, the pope’s brother, from 1964-1994.

“The misery was right in front of his door. He must have known,” said Blaschka, who added that Ratzinger himself hit him.

“I myself have been slapped in the face by him,” he said. “He wasn’t a sadist, but he was obsessed with music.”

The scandal has clearly shaken the Vatican. On Friday, Pope Benedict XVI meets with Robert Zollitsch, the head of the German Bishops Conference, just weeks after he summoned Irish bishops to Rome to hear about the Irish abuse cases. The pope has not commented personally on the German scandal.

On Wednesday, the Vatican’s U.N. envoy dedicated his entire speech to a U.N. meeting on children’s rights to the matter of sexual abuse of minors. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi insisted that protecting the young was “high on the agenda” of all church institutions, as was providing assistance to victims.

But he seemed to imply the church was not entirely at fault, saying what was needed to prevent more abuse was a “culture of respect of the human rights and human dignity of every child” – and improved screening for caregivers and teachers.

Petra Dorsch-Jungsberger, a former Munich communications professor who specializes in church matters, said everyone in Germany was waiting for the pope come forward and offer guidance. She said Benedict might be facing the greatest moral issue for the Roman Catholic Church since World War II.

“He is standing with his back against the wall,” Dorsch-Jungsberger told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

The Roman Catholic Church has been hit by years of sexual abuse claims in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia and other countries. Yet the German abuse allegations are particularly sensitive because Germany is the pope’s homeland and because some of the scandals involve the choir that the pope’s brother, the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, led for 30 years.

Dorsch-Jungsberger said it’s likely that more details will emerge about the abuse cases in Germany.

“This issue is not at its end by a long shot,” she said. “We can expect a few surprises.”

Buckley, who was excommunicated from the Catholic church in 1998 when he became an episcopal bishop, came out in 1999. The 57-year-old will wed Filipino chef Eduardo Yango, 32, in a ceremony at Larne borough council, and later in a ceremony at Buckley’s private chapel, also in Larne.

The move puts the bishop on new ground.

“But this is groundbreaking territory,” Buckley told the Sunday Tribune. “Other priests have married women or entered civil partnerships with men. But they’d all left the church beforehand – none continued with their ministry.”

Buckley is often viewed as outspoken.

“Eduardo and I have the courage to nail our colors to the mast and hopefully we will encourage thousands of others to do the same,” he said. “I’ve been battling against the Catholic church as an institution for 25 years. I’m old and wise enough not to lose sleep worrying over what the hierarchy thinks.”

In 2002, Bishop Buckley said that gays and lesbians would be “as welcome in heaven as all others” and described homophobia as “immoral and sinful,” according to a story in Pink News.

The women were attending last Sunday morning’s service to meet the Rev. Kenneth Whalum Jr., a mayoral candidate in Memphis.

But when Whalum told the congregation to bow to the ground and blow kisses to God, Stephens and her partner, both agnostics, didn’t move.

Stephens said that Whalum and church members then called them “devil worshippers” and “gay” and security guards pushed them out of the sanctuary. Stephen’s classes were broken. No arrests were made.
Whalum told the Commercial Appeal that the women were “being disruptive, boisterous and speaking loud. They had to have some kind of agenda to come in church like that.”

He said that the women were kicked out because of interrupting the service, not because they were lesbians. “If I put every lesbian out of church, we’d be putting people out of church all day long,” said Whalum.

Rowan Williams wrote on his Web site Monday that there are “two styles of being Anglican” and that both sides should work together to maintain the church.

Williams is the Anglican spiritual leader. His comments are in response to a decision by U.S. Episcopalian church last week to authorize bishops to bless same-sex unions and research an official prayer for the ceremonies.

The Episcopal Church caused an uproar among some Anglicans in 2003 by consecrating the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Williams, has struggled since to keep the communion unified.

(London) The Church of Scotland has voted in favor of appointing an openly gay minister.

The church’s ruling body voted 326 to 267 to support the appointment of the Rev. Scott Rennie, 37, who was previously married to a woman and is now in a relationship with a man.

Rennie was first appointed as a minister 10 years ago, but has faced opposition from some critics since he moved to a church in Aberdeen, Scotland, last year.

Protesters had lobbied the Kirk – the Church of Scotland’s ruling executive – over Rennie’s case, saying his appointment was not consistent with the teachings of the Bible.

“We are absolutely opposed to that on the basis of what God has to say about homosexuality in the Bible,” one opponent, Pastor Jack Bell of the Zion Baptist Church in Glasgow, Scotland, said.

The case has divided Scottish religious leaders. About 900 elders and ministers took part in a debate on Rennie’s case, but many chose to abstain from casting a vote.

Rennie said he believed religious conservatives were behind attempts to oust him from his post.

“The same talk was about when women were ordained and I think that argument suits those that don’t want any change,” he told Britain’s Sky News television on Saturday.

Following the vote to back Rennie, Scotland’s Equality and Human Rights Commission said the Church of Scotland had proven itself to be “a modern church for a modern Scotland.”

“We are certain that this decision will be welcomed by the majority of Scots and certainly the majority of Queen’s Cross parish in Aberdeen who overwhelmingly demonstrated their support for Mr. Rennie,” said Alyson Thomson, a commission spokeswoman.

Expanding the focus of a Baptist alliance he helped found, Carter said disagreements over issues such as abortion, homosexuality and the role of women in the church, have divided Baptists.

Carter said those are the kinds of divisive questions that split Baptists down the middle.

Carter spoke at the final worship service of the Southeast regional meeting of the New Baptist Covenant. He helped found the covenant to bring together congregations from racially, geographically, and theologically diverse organizations.

The goal of “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” was to trigger a legal fight and ultimately overturn regulations that prevent places of worship from supporting or opposing candidates for office. But a conservative legal group that organized the effort says the IRS has yet to notify the churches of any investigation.

Legal experts suggest a number of possibilities: The IRS has nothing to gain from a costly and mainly symbolic battle; it has limited resources; or it could still be deciding how to respond.

On Sept. 28, participating pastors urged worshippers to vote according to conservative views on abortion and gay marriage. Several endorsed Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Under the IRS code, places of worship can distribute voter guides, run nonpartisan voter-registration drives and hold forums on issues, among other things. But they cannot endorse a candidate, nor can their political activity be biased for or against a candidate.

Churches that violate the rule can lose their tax-exempt status.

The protest was organized by the Phoenix-based Alliance Defense Fund and involved pastors in 22 states.

“The wheels of bureaucracy move slowly,” said Erik Stanley, the group’s senior legal counsel. “We’re prepared if they do come after these churches, and we’re also prepared if they do not.”

IRS spokesman Christopher Miller declined to comment, and the agency would not confirm or deny whether it is conducting an investigation. At the time of the protest, the IRS said it would “monitor the situation and take action as appropriate.”

ADF officials view the regulation as a violation of the pastors’ right to free speech. Some legal scholars counter that the government has every right to treat political and nonpolitical speech differently.

A number of the pastors said they hoped the IRS would respond immediately so the legal challenge could get under way.

Luke Emrich, pastor at New Life Church in West Bend, Wis., had urged about 100 congregants to support an anti-abortion platform by voting for McCain. He said he was disappointed the IRS had not responded.

“It would have been nice to have a direct conversation with the IRS,” he said. “I thought they would at least contact us, talk to us about the issues.”

Historically, the IRS has been shy to investigate political activity in churches. It has stepped up oversight in recent years after receiving a flurry of complaints from the 2004 campaign. The IRS reported issuing written advisories against 42 churches for improper politically activity that year.

It’s possible the IRS ignored the recent protest because it does not have an incentive to pursue the issue, said Robert Tuttle, a professor of law and religion at George Washington University.

“It would be expensive for them to fight, and it would give people all sorts of reasons to say the IRS is evil and irreligious,” Tuttle said. “It’s not like they’re going to recoup a lot of money. Their attitude is probably ‘why bother?’”

Or, it could be too early to say. When similar violations occurred during previous presidential elections, the IRS took two or three years to introduce litigation to strip a church of its tax-exempt status, said John Witte Jr., director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University.

“Even so, if the IRS wanted to pounce on this, I think it would have by now,” Witte said. Perhaps it did not consider an investigation a wise use of resources, he speculated, or maybe the agency is occupied with more pressing cases.

Stanley, the ADF’s attorney, said the organization will continue its protests as long as necessary, holding annual Pulpit Freedom Sundays every year ahead of federal, state or local elections. If the IRS does not take action against future protests, he said, pastors will learn the regulation can be safely ignored.

Polls suggest the campaign does not have wide support. An August survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that two-thirds of adults oppose political endorsements from churches and other places of worship. Another 52 percent wanted religious institutions out of politics altogether.

But those statistics did not dissuade Pastor Paul Blair, who took part in the initiative at Fairview Baptist Church in Edmond, Okla. He said the main point of the protest was to make a stand to protect religious freedom.

“I don’t let the federal government dictate to me what I can and cannot preach,” he said. “I answer to a higher power than the federal government.”

But the Minneapolis Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America officially lists Calvary’s ministry as vacant. That’s because, sitting with Froslee’s family at his installation ceremony in February, was his male partner of 5 1/2 years – living proof that Froslee has flouted the ELCA’s prohibition on non-celibate gay pastors.

“What I heard from the members of the church’s call committee was that from the first meeting, they knew I was the one meant to be their pastor,” said Froslee, 35. “I’ve always felt called to this process, and that in a sense God has a guiding hand in this. So I always had a sense it would work out.”

But to make it work, Froslee and the church and synod leaders are operating on what church council member Brian Aust called “the margins of the ELCA.” It’s an arrangement that could be formalized this August, when leaders of the ELCA – the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination with 4.7 million members – meet for their biannual convention in Minneapolis.

An ELCA task force has recommended a policy that would let congregations decide whether to allow gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as their clergy. The resolution has been criticized from both directions, with liberals saying it doesn’t go far enough and conservatives saying it conflicts with Scripture.

“This isn’t about sex,” said the Rev. Mark Chavez of Landisville, Pa., the director of Lutheran CORE, a coalition of conservative groups in the ELCA. “It’s finally about the authority of God’s word.”

But the approach envisioned by the task force is already in practice at Calvary Lutheran, a modest 70-year-old brown brick church in a racially diverse neighborhood four miles south of downtown Minneapolis. The 120-member congregation is a mix of young families and single people, middle-aged couples and older established members, and is mostly white despite the surrounding neighborhood.

“In the City for Good,” reads a banner on the front of the church, a symbol of Calvary’s mission of social justice and outreach to distressed communities. When it came time last year to replace the married couple who served as co-pastors the last 13 years, Calvary’s lay leaders wanted someone who would help realize that mission.

“We’re a church that’s serious about being real about issues of crime and poverty and racial and social injustice,” said Josh Moberg, a stay-at-home dad who’s president of the church council. “And Brad had experience working with diverse and poor communities. The identities seemed like a good fit.”

Froslee grew up in the tiny western Minnesota town of Vining, a region still heavily populated by descendants of the German and Scandinavian settlers who helped establish a Lutheran presence in the United States. His family had a long tradition of involvement in their church, and Froslee grew up on a steady diet of Sunday school and church camp.

A high school overachiever, Froslee kept his love of the church into college. But he planned for law school after realizing from a pretty early age “that I was different and didn’t really fit the mold when it came to sexuality,” he said.

In college at St. Olaf in Northfield, a theology professor told Froslee his work had uncommon insight and asked why he wasn’t considering the ministry.

“I hemmed and hawed for quite a while, and then finally I said I don’t think there’s a place for me in the church because I’m gay,” Froslee said. “And he looked at me and said, ‘Brad, that’s a cop-out.’ And that I think really became kind of a turning point for me in terms of my journey.”

Froslee came out to his family while in college, and sharpened his scriptural understanding at Harvard Divinity School. He says he never concealed his sexuality while going through the ordination process, and also made it known his desire to someday find a lifelong partner.

Before joining Calvary, Froslee served as pastor at a Presbyterian church in Minnetonka through a pact between the two denominations. He’s also been an activist on issues of homosexuality and Christianity, co-founding a summer camp for gay, Christian youth. And even after meeting his partner, he stayed on the ELCA’s roster of pastors eligible to serve in Lutheran congregations – which got his name in front of the Calvary committee looking for the new pastor.

Aust, an attorney who chaired that committee, said Calvary wasn’t looking for trouble. “Our simple motivation was find the best person, gay or straight. It wasn’t about labels,” he said.

The Minneapolis Synod of the ELCA signed off on the arrangement, but lists Calvary’s ministry as vacant. “We viewed it as a decision for the congregation to make,” said Minneapolis Synod Bishop Craig Johnson.

Froslee and church council members said there are few real ramifications to the vacant designation, save that Froslee can’t vote at synod assemblies. But from a symbolic standpoint, they said, it’s not ideal.

“It’s sort of don’t ask, don’t tell,” said Moberg, the church council president. “It’s not necessarily the way we’d like it to be.”

Not every gay pastor has been as fortunate as Froslee. In Atlanta in 2007, the Rev. Bradley Schmeling was kicked off the ELCA roster entirely after acknowledging he had a partner – a decision that helped precipitate the ELCA’s attempt to find a middle ground. Just a few miles away from Calvary at Salem Lutheran Church, the Rev. Jen Nagel, also partnered, has been kept off the ELCA roster – putting her congregation even further on the ELCA margin than Calvary.

Rev. Peter Strommen, a pastor from Prior Lake, Minn., who led the task force that proposed the policy change, said it’s an attempt to officially recognize the lack of consensus across the ELCA.

With rapid social change on gay rights even in recent weeks, including the sudden legalization of gay marriage in Vermont and Iowa, he said the Lutheran church must find a way to proceed amid strongly divergent viewpoints.

“We’ve tried to stress here that this is not a core issue of our faith,” Strommen said. “It’s important. But it doesn’t get to the level of the risen Christ and salvation.”

Prosecutors opened their case file Thursday on Jim David Adkisson, 58, who pleaded guilty a month ago to killing two people and wounding six others at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville. The file includes interviews with investigators and a suicide note Adkisson left in his car.

Now serving a life sentence, Adkisson told police during an hour-long interrogation three hours after the July 27 shooting that he was unemployed, depressed and ready to take his anger out on what he called “an ultra-liberal” church that “never met a pervert they just didn’t embrace.”

“They just glory (in) these weirdos and sickos and homos,” he said in an interview recorded by investigators.

He also railed against the Unitarian Church: “That ain’t a church, that’s a damned cult,” Adkisson said.

The Knoxville church said in a statement Thursday that the congregation was still healing and that many hoped Adkisson would also “be healed of whatever motivated his actions.”

Adkisson walked into the church, pulled a sawed-off shotgun from a guitar case and fired into a congregation of about 230 people watching a children’s musical performance.

He expected police would kill him. Instead, church members wrestled him to the ground.

Recorded calls to Knox County’s 911 Center proved the panic and rapid response by church members. Just four minutes after the first 911, a police officer reports Adkisson is in custody.

Shortly after a woman caller told dispatchers of the attack, a man calling from the church reported that worshipers had disarmed the attacker and weren’t about to let him go.

“They may beat him to death, but they’ve got him,” the caller said.

Adkisson left a four-page suicide note in his SUV in the church parking lot. In it, he described the attack as “a hate crime,” “a political protest” and “a symbolic killing.”

He railed against extending constitutional rights to terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, about the news media being “the propaganda wing of the Democrat Party,” and how he would like to kill every major Democrat in Congress. But he said they were inaccessible and decided to go after “the foot soldiers, the (expletive) liberals that vote in these traitorous people.”

Adkisson concluded, “I’d like to encourage other like-minded people to do what I’ve done. If life ain’t worth living anymore don’t just kill yourself. Do something for your country before you go. Go kill liberals.”

Adkisson told police he had never attended the church. But his fifth wife, Liza Alexander, who divorced him in 2000, had attended the church and convinced him to work as a counselor at Unitarian youth camps.

“I was in a marriage and I loved this woman, but she was just … I’d never been around somebody that liberal in my life,” he said.

Before she divorced him, Alexander got a protection order, claiming Adkisson threatened “to blow my brains out and then blow his own brains out,” according to file documents.

Catherine Murray, who was friends with the couple, told police Adkisson had drug and alcohol problems and “basically was afraid of anybody or anything that was not like him.”

Adkisson had worked a series of industrial jobs, including as a pipe worker at a Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear plant and on the Saturn Corp. auto assembly line, until 2006.

He complained in his suicide note and later in his interview with police that he was always being laid off and his prospects were growing slim as he got older. Again, he blamed liberals and Democrats.

He entered the church with 50 shotgun cartridges. He told police he planned to kill every adult in the sanctuary, but would spare the children because they also were “victims.”

“I regret that I have but one life to give for my country,” said Adkisson, an Air Force veteran. “I hope I start a movement.”

Adkisson told interrogators he was “crazy” and depressed but had never been diagnosed. His lawyer has said Adkisson rebuffed attempts to pursue an insanity defense.

“I just did what I did today,” Adkisson said. “See if you’d met me in a bar … on a street, you’d say, ‘Well, that’s a nice fellow.’ And I am.”

Scranton Bishop Joseph Martino says Misericordia University shouldn’t have sanctioned a Feb. 17 visit by author Keith Boykin. He says viewpoints that contradict Catholic teaching should not be presented “under the guise of ‘diversity.’”

The school’s Diversity Institute describes itself as an educational resource center that promotes multicultural understanding.

The school said in a statement that it “welcomes the opportunity” to discuss the matter with Martino.