Posted in category "Scandals"
While researching a post about the character of Sal Romano, a closeted homosexual advertising executive on the very popular AMC series, “Mad Men,” I clicked on a link to a story about the 2002 murder of Salvatore Romano, 57, the last of the capoclaques, professional clappers traditionally entrusted with leading the applause at the theater, opera or other such event. Romano was paid by singers to applaud their performances at Rome’s opera house. He was believed to be murdered by someone he picked up and brought home for sex. Neighbors saw a young man running down the stairs with a cigarette in his mouth.
But it was another Roman victim mentioned in the article that caught my eye – Enrico Luizi, a papal protocol aide.
“Police are hunting for the killer of one of the pope’s gentlemen-in-waiting,” an article began, “who was found battered to death in his apartment surrounded by his Vatican medals and with a gay pornographic cassette in his VCR.”
Papal official Enrico Sini Luzi, 67, was founded dressed in his underwear with a cashmere scarf wrapped around his neck, lying face down on a velvet cushion. The back of his head had been smashed in by a brass candelabrum found nearby.
At the time of his death in January 1998, he was the latest of 19 men, suspected to be gay, who were murdered in Rome since 1990. There was speculation that some or all of the unsolved killings are the work of a serial killer, as many of the victims were found with scarves tied around their necks.
Mr. Sini Luzi, in his day garb of white tie and tails bedecked with papal decorations, served as an escort for bishops, ambassadors and heads of state who came to the Apostolic Palace for audiences with Pope John Paul II. His family family belonged to the minor nobility. 
At night, Luzi was a well-known figure in Roman male-only bars.
“He was a sociable man, maybe too much so. He knew a lot of people and brought many people home, usually young people,” a neighbor said.
The Vatican yearbook noted Mr. Sini Luzi began service as a Gentleman of His Holiness in April 1989. The Gentlemen of His Holiness were formerly known as Papal Chamberlains; they received their current title after the 1968 reform of papal ceremonies by Pope Paul VI.
A Vatican spokesman didn’t comment on Luzi’s murder, but the newspaper La Repubblica quoted an official of the Curia, the Rev. Giovanni D’Ercole, as saying: “In the face of death, one must only be silent. One cannot express judgements because it is not yet clear how the whole thing happened.”
Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Italian Catholic bishops’ conference, reported in a brief notice that Luzi, whom it identified only as “E.S.L, a Roman nobleman,” died earlier that week, presumably the victim of violence.
Franco Grillini of Arcigay, the Italian gay and lesbian rights organization, accused the Vatican and Catholic hierarchy of creating a “homophobic atmosphere” that he said was “in large part responsible for this culture of violence.”
“This time, the victim is a gentleman of the pope’s entourage, which confirms that the people at risk are those who hide and live among people where homosexuality is not acknowledged, like the Curia,” he said.
Some members of Mr. Sini Luzi’s familystrenuously denied he was homosexual. “He was not a person of ‘certain habits,’” his brother, Lillo, 72, was quoted by La Repubblica as saying. “Such comportment cannot be reconciled with his morality and the Catholic education he always observed.”
Mr. Lillo Sini Luzi said any evidence of homosexual activity found in his brother’s apartment had probably been introduced by the assailant “as a trick.”
“There are a lot of skeletons in Martina’s closet. It is more like a storage facility full of them, and I know them all,” said Toni Layton, 50ish, who left her computer salesman husband, Jeffrey Lambert, for the nine-time Wimbleton champion in 2001. Layton claims she helped nurture and enrich Martina’s career during their time together and is seeking a substantial financial settlement.
Or else.
This long-time lover of Martina Navatilova is threatening to air the tennis great’s dirty laundry if she doesn’t receive a settlement to her liking based on their eight years together. For the last twelve months she has attempted to negotiate a payment with no success. She was offered $200,000 which she refuses to accept.
“The offer was an insult. Navratilova is using Florida’s failure to recognize gay marriage to her advantage. We are standing up for gay rights in this case,” said Layton’s attorney. “Toni Layton has the right to obtain a fair settlement the same as if she were the spouse in a traditional marriage.”
Martina seems to have a soft spot for married women: country club blondes, with pretty faces and chic figures a few years older than she is. She woos them, and they fall madly in love with a woman for the first time. After six or seven years the relationship has lost its zest and Martina is ready to move on. But the woman who left her husband and family doesn’t see it that way.
In 1993 the live-in lover prior to Layton, Judy Nelson, wrote Love Match – Nelson vs. Navratilova - a tell-all book about her seven-year relationship with Martina. The Texan, now 63, left her husband for Martina after the two women were first introduced by Nelson’s 11-year-old son, who was a ball boy. In 1991 Nelson sued Martina for “palimony” and the case was settled out-of-court for an undisclosed sum. 
Judy Nelson was apparently a “kept” woman, claiming she was paid $90,000 annually as Martina’s “maid” while accompanying her on the international tennis circuit. Unlike Nelson, Martina never paid Toni Layton a wage.
Nelson chronicled her self-proclaimed victimization further in a second book about the relationship, Choices, published in 1996. Rita Mae Brown, another one of Martina’s exs, wrote the forward to Love Match, where she refers to Nelson as a woman “whose hair gets ruined by a ceiling fan.”
In true lesbian daisy chain fashion, everybody is linked by sex or love. Martina left Rita Mae in 1981 to take up with Judy Nelson. Rita Mae took up with Judy Nelson in 1992 after her breakup with Martina. Rita Mae Brown wrote her own roman a clef about Martina in Sudden Death, a novel about a moody tennis star who cheats on her lover with a fan.
Poor Martina. Three books by seething ex-lovers and it looks like a fourth will hit the shelves unless she coughs up big money. I feel for her. There is nothing on earth nastier and more vicious than a woman you want to leave but won’t let go.
Martina dedicated her fitness book, Shape Yourself, to Toni, calling her “someone pretty darn special.” “When I wanted to dedicate this book to her, she asked me not to do that, but instead to dedicate it to all those who inspire others, not just in words but in deeds because she would not be my inspiration if she had not been inspired by others.”
A friend said: “Toni is still heartbroken but is gradually getting over the split. Maybe she now wishes she had read Judy Nelson’s book before she got involved with Martina?” 
My post, New Fr. Marical Maciel Degollado Sex Scandal, prompted a few comments. One came from Greg Krehbiel, who writes the blog, Crowhill Weblog. Mr. Krehbiel wrote, “I don’t think people have yet come to grasp with the real significance of this story. If a manifest fraud like Maciel was able to deceive so many devout, serious people (including the pope!) what does that imply?”
Mr. Krehbiel included a link to his excellent article on Google, “The True Significance of the Fr. Maciel Story.” Some key excerpts:
“Those of us who believed the accusations against Fr. Maciel were scolded and lectured in stern tones from on high, with brows furrowed in anger and the accusing finger wagging. We were told that Fr. Maciel was being persecuted by people who hated the church, but he, saintly fellow, was taking it all in stride, bearing it like Jesus, glad to be a martyr and take his part in the sufferings of Christ.”
“Specifically, what does this story tell us about movements, leaders, followers, charlatans, con artists and enablers of various sorts, and how does that affect our reckoning of the history of the church and the evidences of Christianity? How were so many people, including Pope John Paul II, fooled by this guy?”
“This is not an idle question for Christians, for although it’s certainly true that Fr. Maciel’s sins say nothing directly about the truth of Christianity, they have indirect but important implications for Christian apologetic and epistemology, and I think these implications haven’t been seriously addressed.”
An article to read next to Mr. Krehbiel’s is the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus’s defense of Fr. Maciel, “Feathers of Scandal“ which was published by First Things in March 2002.
Fr. Neuhaus’ withering reflection was inspired by the fallout from a 1997 story in the Hartford Courant, a Connecticut newspaper, that was reprinted in the National Catholic Reporter, “a left-wing tabloid,” Fr. Neuhaus called it. Read the NCR article here. It is about the testimony of several of the men who claimed Fr. Maciel sexually abused them as seminarians, and how the Vatican put a protective wall around the Legionaires founder, refusing to investigate any of their charges.
The Hartford Courant story had been coauthored Gerald Renner, formerly the religion writer for the paper, and Jason Berry, a freelance writer in New Orleans, the author of the books Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children (1992) and Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II (1996).
Here’s what Fr. Neuhaus had to say in Fr. Maciel’s defense:
“I am not neutral about the Legionaries. I have spent time with Fr. Maciel, and he impresses me as a man who combined uncomplicated faith, gentle kindness, military self-discipline, and a relentless determination to do what he believes God has called him to do. They are qualities one would expect of someone who at age twenty-0ne in Mexico vowed to do something great for Christ and his Church, and has been allowed to do it. In the language of the tradition, they are qualities associated with holiness; in his case a virile holiness of tenacious resolve that has been refined in the fires of frequent opposition and misunderstanding.”
“Nonetheless, because I care about the Legion, and because I was outraged by what I suspected as a gross injustice, I decided to go through endless pages of testimony, counter-testimony, legal documents, and other materials related to the Berry/Renner attack on Fr. Maciel. It was not an edifying experience. For Berry/Renner, it is worth noting, the case of Fr. Maciel is not all that important in itself, but it serves another purpose. ‘To many,’ they write in the recent NCR article, ‘the case against Maciel is important because it tests the Vatican’s resolve to pursue charges related to sexual misconduct at the highest levels of the Church.’ The ‘many’ includes, first of all, Berry and Renner. That is clearly the reason for the latest re-raking of the muck of their 1997 article. They report nothing substantially new in the allegations themselves; the only new thing is that the Vatican has again considered the charges and found them without merit. A cardinal in whom I have unbounded confidence and who has been involved in the case tells me that the charges are ‘pure invention, without the slightest foundation.’”
“It counts as evidence that Fr. Maciel unqualifiedly and totally denies the charges. It counts as evidence that priests in the Legion whom I know very well and who, over many years, have a detailed knowledge of Fr. Maciel and the Legion say that the charges are diametrically opposed to everything they know for certain. It counts as evidence that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and others who have looked into the matter say that the charges are completely without merit. It counts as evidence that Pope John Paul II, who almost certainly is aware of the charges, has strongly, consistently, and publicly praised Fr. Maciel and the Legion. Much of what we know we take on trust. I trust these people. The suggestion that they are either deliberately deceiving or duped is totally implausible.” (My emphasis) 
A last point from Mr. Krehbiel’s article: “Christianity was spread by personal testimony. There was no Wall Street Journal or–God forbid–New York Times to verify the information. People believed the Christian testimony because they respected the lifestyle of the people they heard it from.
This is an important equation that lies at the root and foundation of Christianity–i.e., the fact that you live a decent life makes me want to believe what you say about God.”
Poor Pope Benedict XVI. The 3-week-old Lefevbrist storm was just starting to die down, when another gift horse just bit him.
The late Marcial Marciel Degollado is back in the news. He may have had one or more mistresses that bore him a daughter and possibly a son. The rumoured daughter is in her 20s and living in Spain. 
Jim Fair, a spokesman for the Legionnaires of Christ, said only: “We have learned some things about our founder’s life that are surprising and difficult for us to understand. We can confirm that there are some aspects of his life that were not appropriate for a Catholic priest.”
That’s a understatement.
And here I thought he was just a closeted serial molester of boys and young men. It turns out he was working both sides of the room.
Imagine that.
Another rumor – the Legionnaires came clean because the Vatican was about to release the news. 
More here and here.
I do feel for the membership who believed in this man and now feel betrayed.
But my heart goes out to the dozens of sex abuse victims of Fr. Marcial, who have never been acknowledged by either Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI or the Legionnaires of Christ.
Their betrayal continues.
The current book by my armchair is The Power and the Glory: Inside the Dark Heart of John Paul II’s Vatican by David Yallop. In the chapter, “The Marketplace” the author discusses the discreet, but powerful involvement of money in the popular Medjugorje pilgrimage site. A series of local bishops declared the apparitions a hoax and the visionaries liars, but so far the Vatican has declined to make a pronouncement.
On page 221 of the book the author quotes this gem from a member of the Secretariat of State about Medjugorje: “Of course its a fraud but the money is genuine.” 
On January 6, 2009, the conservative Italian Catholic website “Petrus” broke a story that Pope Benedict has instructed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to prepare a vademecum, or handbook, on how to deal with alleged Marian apparations and visions such as those at Medjugorje. It actually amounts to an update of a 1978 document on the same subject.
It would reportedly require individuals who said they have experienced appearances or visions of the Virgin Mary to remain silent while their claims are investigated carefully by Church authorities.
The document was also rumoured to specify that local bishops should set up commissions composed of psychiatrists, psychologists, theologians and priests to investigate the claimed apparitions.
The commission is supposed to establish whether the visionary seems psychologically unstable; whether trickery or economic interests may be involved; whether any alleged revelation is consistent with church teaching; and whether there are grounds to suspect demonic influence.
One interesting winkle: according to the Petrus report the alleged seers will be required to turn over their computers to investigators, who are supposed to determine if they’ve gone online researching miracles and wonders–suggesting that perhaps they wanted to minic other famed incidents.
In the background to these alleged new guidelines lurks the continuing controversy over Medjugorje, the Bosnian site where the Virgin Mary has been delivering revelation to a group of local seers since 1981. Medjugorje has become a pilgrimage destination for millions of devotees every year, despite the fact the church has never authenticated the visions. Pope John Paul II was a believer.
Vatican concern has also been shaped by ferment in Italy over the “Madonnina” or “little Madonna” of Civitavecchia–a small statute of the Virgin, originally purchased in Medjugorje, which has reportedly been shedding tears of blood since the mid-1990s. 
In May 2008, his excellency Andrea Gemma, 78, bishop emeritus of the Isernia-Venafro Diocese northeast of Rome and one of Italy’s best known exorcists, announced in Petrus that the Catholic Church had officially stated that the Blessed Mother had never appeared in Medjugorje and that the entire operation was the “work of the devil.” When asked to be more specific about the interests motivating involvement in Medjugorje, the bishop declared, “I’m referring to the devil’s shit, money.”
The fact that many priests from around the world continue to lead pilgrimages there is “a disgrace,” the bishop added. “The phony seers and their assistants make money hand over fist, while at the same time the devil creates dissension between the faithful and the Church.”
The well known theologian Rene Laurentin, after years of research, has recorded over 2,450 Marian documented events in the history of the church. But out of almost 300 requests for investigation initiated in the last 100 years, church authorities have officially certified as true only a dozen appearances. The most recent recognition is “Our Lady of Laus,” in France, which took place on May 8, 2008.
The local diocese declared the apparition as authentic in 1665. It only took the Vatican three and a half centuries to concur.
Fr. Roy Bourgeois, 69, a Maryknoll priest and nationally known peace activist, has been excommunicated for his participation at an ordination rite for women. 
Bourgeois ran afoul of Vatican doctrine by participating in the August 9, 2008 ceremony in Lexington, Kentucky, to ordain Janice Sevre-Duszynska, a member of Roman Catholic Womenpriests. Sevre-Duszynska is the 35th woman to be ordained.
Vatican spokesman Fr. Frederico Lombardi said Bourgeois’ excommunication would be automatic, in other words, a latae sententiae excommunication, effective when the offense is committed. In other words, the person excommunicates himself or herself.
Excommunication is the most severe penalty under church law, cutting off a Catholic from receiving or administering the sacraments.
Fr. Bourgeois said he was following his conscience in his participation at the ordination rite, though it was clearly against the church’s teaching on women’s ordination.
“Conscience is very sacred,” Bourgeois said in his November 7, 2008 letter to Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. “Conscience gives us a sense of right and wrong and urges us to do the right thing…Conscience is what compels women in our Church to say they cannot be silent and deny their call from God to the priesthood..And after much prayer, reflection and discernment, it is my conscience that compels me to do the right thing. I cannot recant my belief and public statements that support the ordination of women in our Church.”
James Martin, SJ, a writer and associate editor of America Magazine, noted in its document Dignitatis Humane, the Second Vatican Council wrote: “On his part, man perceives and acknowledges the imperatives of the divine law through the mediation of conscience. In all his activity man is bound to follow his conscience in order that he may come to God, the end and purpose of life. It follows that he is not to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience. Nor, on the other hand, is he to be restrained from acting in accordance with this conscience, especially in matters religious.”
Martin added that the Catechism of the Catholic Church, quoting from Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes notes, “Conscience is man’s most secret core, and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.”
Fr. Bourgeois was impelled to follow his conscience. He must have known by participating in the ceremony–particularly in the laying on of hands, one of the main symbols of ordination in the Catholic church–his actions would have some serious consequences.
But why did the Vatican feel compelled to enforce canon law and excommunicate him within three months of the event?
In comparison, I do not know of s single instance where a Catholic priest, bishop or other religious has been publicly excommunicated for the sexual abuse or rape of a minor.
Does that mean it’s more of a scandal for a man in good conscience to participate in the laying on of hands in a women’s ordination ceremony; than a man to lay hands on a child for his sexual gratification?
Is something off here?
A federal appeals court has permitted a lawsuit over alleged sexual abuse to proceed against the Vatican.
The ruling, issued on November 24, 2008 by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, marks the first time a court at so high a level has recognized that the Vatican could be liable for negligance in the thousands of sex abuse cases in the U.S.
Sex abuse victims and their attorneys have long claimed that the church failed to report priests accused of sexual crimes and misconduct; and instead covered up the deeds to protect them.
Walking a fine line in recognition of Vatican sovereignty, the appeals court found that the Vatican may be responsible for policies or directives as they were carried out in the U.S., and may have affected how abuse complaints were handled.
One of the central pieces of evidence in the case was a 1962 memo, issued by the Vatican and unearthed by reporters in 2003, that directs Catholic bishops to keep silent about claims of sexual abuse. The document was approved by John XXIII.
“What the court has allowed us to do is proceed against the Vatican for the conduct of the U.S. bishops because of the bishops’ failure…to report child abuse,” said William F. McMurry, the attorney for three men who claim they were abused as children by priests in the Louisville, Kentucky archdiocese.
The November 24 ruling will allow the plaintiffs’ case to proceed in the U.S. District Court in Louisville. Among the legal questions to be decided in the case is whether U.S. bishops are employees of the Vatican, and whether they acted on the Holy See’s orders.
The late John Paul II was wounded in a 1982 knife attack. The would-be assassin, a priest, attacked the pope during a visit to Fatima Square in Portugal. The priest was opposed to the reforms adopted by the church after Vatican II.
The pope kept the injury secret. He carried on with the trip without disclosing his wound.
The incident is described in a new film, Testimony, and is based on the 2007 book of the same name by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the pope’s long-time secretary and friend. Cardinal Dziwisz accompanied Karol Wojtyla from his time in Poland until his last days in the Vatican. The film is a testimony of John Paul II’s life, presenting many new facts and interpretations. 
The film premiered at the Vatican on October 16, 2008. It is narrated by actor Michael York.
Dziwisz, who is now cardinal of Krakow, Poland, was John Paul’s private secretary and closest aide for nearly 40 years, including all his 27 years as pontiff.
“Today I can say what up to now we have kept secret,” Dziwisz said in the move. “That priest wounded the Holy Father..When we got back to the room there was blood.”
The attack occured on May 12, 1982, when Juan Fernandez Krohn lunged at John Paul with a bayonet during a ceremony in the shrine of Fatima in Portugal. The Pope had gone to the shrine to give thanks for surviving a gunshot wound from Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981.
Krohn was an ultra conservative priest, and former member of the Society of Saint Pius X. He was expelled from that group because he openly proclaimed Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre opposition to Pope John Paul II was too weak. 
Krohn was expelled from Portugal in 1985 after serving half of a six year jail sentence.
In a letter sent to Congressional leaders on September 26, 2008, Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, NY, chairman of the episcopal conference’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, urged a consideration of five key principles when considering how to bail out the nation’s failing economy. 
The first key Bishop Murphy encouraged was taking into account the “human and moral dimensions” of the crisis.
“Economic arrangements, structures and remedies should have as a fundamental purpose safeguarding human life and dignity,” he affirmed. Murphy said a “scandalous search for excessive economic rewards,” is an example of “an economic ethic that places economic gain above all other values.”
“This ignores the impact of economic decisions on the lives of real people as well as the ethical dimension of the choices we make and the moral responsibility we have for their effect on people,” Bishop Murphy wrote.
He called for responsibility and accountability.
“Clearly, effective measures are required which address and alter the behaviors, practices and misjudgements that led to this crisis…Those who directly contributed tothis crisis or have profited from it should not be rewarded or escape accountability for the harm they have done,” he said.
“There are human needs which find no place on the market,” Murphy stressed. “It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied.” In this regard, he called for a “renewal of instruments of monitoring and corection within economic institutions and the financial industry as well as effective public regulation and protection to the extent this may be clearly necessary.”
Bishop Murphy’s Diocese of Rockville Centre is based on Long Island. Many of his flock, myself included, work in New York or for people who commute there. Long Islanders have been particularly walloped by the Wall Street meltdown.
It’s stunning just how fast and how deep this collapse is, racing around the world to batter everyone’s economy.
This crisis has created a teachable moment for the bishops – what can happen in an ethics vacuum, and how we are all interconnected.
Any decline in the financial industry has ripple effects across the region, said Jesuit Fr. James Martin, associate editor of America magazine. Before his ordination, Fr. Martin worked in corporate finance with General Electric.
“It’s more a symptom of environments where people seem much more interested in making money than in making sensible decisions,” he said. Senior executives made “obscene amounts of money making bad investments,” he said, and there were no incentives not to continue.
“They were carried away by greed and that trumped rational responsibility. They should have known better.”
Tony Alamo is the leader of the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries in Fouke, Arkansas. The organization’s headquarters were raided by the FBI after a two-year long investigation into child pornography. Although Alamo has denied the allegations, he has been quoted as saying that puberty is the age of consent for girls.
Alamo, an evangelical preacher, built a business empire from street ministry recipients and their children, many of whom were addicted to drugs and had no where else to go.
In a phone call to The Associated Press from a friend’s house in the Los Angeles area, Alamo denied any involvement in pornography or child abuse:
“We don’t go into pornography; nobody in the church is into that,” said Alamo, 73. “Where do these allegations stem from? The anti-Christ government. The Catholics don’t like me because I have cut their congregation in half. They hate true Christianity.”
During an April 2008 radio broadcast, Alamo proclaimed that the government had no right to take 10-year-old wives away from their rightful “husbands”: “What I’m doing is fighting for these people that they, the ungodly beast, is throwing into prison for marrying someone 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11—10, if they’ve reached puberty.”
In recent broadcasts, Alamo waxed poetic about menstruation: “The Bible is filled with stories where God commanded young women to get married. When they start their periods, they are women, according to God’s word. They should be able to be married at 13, 14, 15 years old, and in cases if they’ve menstruated already, 12 years old.”
He also contends that Mary was as young as six at the time she conceived Jesus, and sarcastically asks if God could be considered a pedophile: “You want to take the Almighty God to jail, because He wanted the Son of God to be born of a young virgin? But you, Satan, you wicked people in the Vatican, and all the rest of you want people—men—to be married to old bags! You want [girls] to wait until they’re 18 years old, and them having had sex with possibly up to 100 men!”
While Alamo publicly says he’s not a polygamist, and challenges outsiders to “find marriage licenses about me being married to anybody.” Ex-members say he has unofficially “married” at least eight young girls and many others live in his house.
Tony Alamo was born Bernie LaZar Hoffman in Missouri to Romanian-Jewish parents in 1934. In the early 1960s he moved to Los Angeles, where he met aspiring actress Susan Lipowitz, a Jewish convert to evanglical Christianity. They married in a 1966 Las Vegas ceremony, and legally changed their names to Tony and Susan Alamo. Tony wanted to break into singing and managing bands, and thought an Italian-sounding last name would be more helpful to his career than a Jewish one.
Alamo and his wife were active as street preachers along Hollywood’s Sunset Strip in the ’60s. They also manufactured and sold a line of “Tony Alamo” brand sequined demim jackets, a business that would eventually land Tony in jail for tax evasion. The women and girls the Alamos recruited from their street ministry did the sewing as “volunteers.” 
These days, Alamo doesn’t seem likely to get additional young female friends.
At a recent meeting in New York, the few locals who seemed to be recent recruits were down-and-out men, including a former Nation of Islam member and two immigrant workers speaking Spanish. “You can be saved over the phone if you want,” one woman suggested, giving out the 1-800 prayer line for the ministry, when one newcomer was too shy to go up to the “altar” to be reborn.
“They’re full of conspiracy theories about Waco and Jim Jones and stuff, and they hate, I mean hate, the Catholic Church,” offers one man, a diabetic on an irregular income. “They can be a little pushy about the whole saving-your-soul thing. But they do have a really nice salad bar.” 
