us. all week financial exports in and out of washington warned of the catastrophic consequences if the congress does not raise the country's debt ceiling after august 2nd. after that deadline the government would not be able to pay all of the obligations for first time in history. officials warned that could trigger financial chaos and vast hardship. by the week's end there were times of a temporary fix to the debt ceiling problem, but no agreement on a long-term deal on spending and taxes, which many had wanted, including the president. >> i think it is important for the american people that everybody in this town set politics aside, that everybody in this town sets, you know, our individual interests aside, and we try to do some tough stuff. >> in the midst of the financial debate, where are the churches?

can ligiousleads flnce e politicians? author and activist reverend jim wallace is the editor of "sojourners" magazine and his is a leading religious voice in political debate. jim, welcome. >> thanks, bob. >> there are two big questions that people are arguing about in this town. one is the debt ceiling, and the other is long-term. and it does seem that something has to be done now, but long-term, how do we bring the country's spending and taxes in line? you have beenorking very hard lobbyio potect government programs that help the poor. how are you doing? >> well, i think i'm happy with what we have seen so far. we started with a provocative question, what would jesus cut? that got attention to the question. then we fasted for almost a month in lent that brought more attention to it. then we formed a circle of protection and the roman catholic bishops, the salvation

army, the national association of evangelicals and many people and not just the religious left re, butlmost everyone he saying thatou can't bance theudgetn t bac o the poorest people. i think that voice is now being heard. we have talked with republicans, democrats and the white house right along on this. >> you are trying, i think to get a meeting with a lot of the players in this? >> we have been meeting right along and continuing to as well. >> what do you say to them? >> we say that there are principles here that a budget is a moral document, and must be evaluated by those from the bottom-up. that is our point of view, and the common good has tooutweigh ideogical,olitical bates iswn,ut we also asked them what their faith means? if they are people of faith, and many of them say they are, and what their faith means and how their moral cos(ass decides things. >> you ask them what their faith means, and if you insist on no compromise. >> yes, to the evangelicals and

the republican and the democratic side. we don't lobby for bills, bob. but we say there are principles here and you can't have all of the benefits going to the corporation and the wealthy people and nothing for those who are most vulrabl >> but t comon ood, this idea of the common good, is very important to religious and ethics. how do you define it? who says what the common good is? >> well, this week we have organized 5,000 pastors to say, let's look at the real people in our congregations, and in our communities, and what is going to happen to them as opposed to the washington, d.c. question, who sup? who is down? who is going to be the speaker of the house next time? who is going to win the election, but the common good is about the people, the people we haveo always takento accnt and the pastors, i wanted to talk to people whose job it is to read the bible to get to the focus of who the real people are here. >> but this argument of how to cut spending, what could be cut, how the raise income, this is a

very technical, very political argument. how do religious leaders feel about, do you feel that you have the ability to get in and be influential in something as technical as this debate? >> you know, the details are technical. d not difficult, rely. once yougree so principles, the details can be worked out by the politicians. you know, we say that let justice roll down like waters and let the politicians work out the plumbing here. we don't get into all of the details, but we are saying that there are principles here. if this is going to focus on targeting poor people, we say that is wrong. it has to be shared sacrifice here. how you do it -- this is not rocket science. we could solve this if the principles were clear from the start. >> many thanks to jim wallace of "sojourners" magazine. >> thank you, bob.

in ireland, the justice minister describes as "truly scandalous" the findings of a new government report on clergy sex abuse, this time in a rural diosese of county cork. the report shows that complain against niteenriests were noreds rent as 09, thirteen years after the irish church hierarchy issued guidelines for the protection of children. this is only the latest episode in a long series of events that have altered irish society and left ireland's once-powerful catholic church so weakened, some say it could become irrelevant. deborah potter reports. it is often called the emerald isle, and with good reason, because ireland is as green as ever. but the country that once was a bastion of roman catholicism has changed. the vast majority of people here still call themselves catholic-87% on the most recent census.

butany ofhe most fahf church-goers ireland today aren't even irish. this sunday mass in limerick is said in polish for some of the thousands of immigrants who poured in during the economic boom of the past decade. but it's hard to find an irish congregation this packed, and especially this young, in bigger cities. >> people still identify themselves as culturally caolic even though they no longer go to mass or go to confession. you'll see them at first communions, you'll see them at confirmations, you'll see them at funerals. they're taking a very much an a la carte view to the practice of their religion. >> reporter: as recently as the 1970s, almost 90% of the irish catholics went to mass at least once a week. today, the number is closer to 25%. and in some parts of dublin, just two or three percent of self-described catholics regularly go to church.

did you grow up catholic by chance? >> yes. >> do you go to mass now? >> noteal that much. t that much at all. >> weddings and funerals. things like that. that's basically it. >> those who do go for special occasions like this prayer service in county galway can't help but notice that the people in the pews have changed. reverend tony flannery, associate of catholic priests. >> they're old. that is the main thing. when you look down at a congregation from the altar now you'll see mostly gray heads. the young people, the under 40's, have largely deserted the church in ireland now. >> irish priests are aging too. on average, they're well over

60. many are still working into their 80s. and replacements have slowed to a trickle. at maynooth, the country's only catholic seminary, the number of students being ordained to the priesthood has never been lower. >> 20 years ago you could have been certainly over 20, but maybe not that unusual to have a year where there would have been 30. now we're more likely to have somewhere under 10. six, seven, that kind of thing. >> in the diosese in dublin, not a single priest will be ordained this year, or next year. ch it's been a stunning decline for a church that once virtually ruled the country. >> it was a huge organization it was like an alternative state within the state. . it's run our schools, it's run our orphanages, it ran our reformatories, it ran most of our hospitals, and so therefore you can get an idea of the scale of what the catholic church was. it was an alternative society within ireland. >> the catholic church here in ireland saw its influence begin to wane with the social upheaval in the 1960s. but in the past 20 years, two

factors combined to accelerate that decline. first, sudden prosperity, and then the shocking revelations of sessi sexual abuse. the worldwide recession stopped the so-called celtic tiger in its tracks, but consumerism had already weakened the church's hold on the irish people, who had become far better educated over the previous 40 years. >> they questioned their faith, they questioned the right of bishops to tell them how to live their lives. >> the body blow, however, came from the clergy abuse scandals that hit harder and closer to home in ireland than anywhere else. here, almost everyone knows someone who's been affected. maybe we as older people did a lot of covering up. we were also into appearances, putting our best foot forward, saying the right things. i think with all the scandals that have been revealed, it certainly made people think more and question lot of things that were happening. >> mary immack you >> the who had a shaky faith now had an excuse for walking

because why would you go to the church every sunday morning to hear somebody who potentially is in a league with child abuserers, and i think that many people used the, the backlash against child abuse as a basis for saying, "do i really want to subscribe, doi want to contribute, do i want to be a part of that type of a church anymore?" i think athe hrt oou obleisn a nse thchur has lost its moral authority. the church has lost its right to speak out on issues. >> the abuse was a betrayal of trust, pope benedict acknowledged in a pastoral letter last year to irish catholics, his first-ever apology for the sexual abuse of children by priests. this year, during an extraordinary liturgy of lament and repentance at dublin's pro-cathedral, the archbishop of dublin and boston's cardinal o'malley prostrated themselves, asking god and the victims for forgiveness. but it hasn't been enough. >> people are still waiting, i think, for the kind of great

atonement and the kind of fundamental change that will convince them that things have changed. there isn't enough evidence yet that things have fundamentally changed. >> it is a crisis, and it's not one of the future. it is one of right now. it's quite extraordinary an organization as big and as -- ancient as the church that we cannot face a crisis that's right at our doorsteps and be able to talk realistically about it. >> the kind of change father flannery advocates would be dramatic. >> opening up the ministry of the church to l people, to married people, to priests, ah, to women. in other words, not confining it to the male celibate priesthood as we've had in the past, because clearly that is not working now so we have to begin to think in different ways, but the vatican is increasingly forbidding any discussion on that. >> still, there are small signs of renewal. some parishes now have lay people in positions that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. kevin mullally is a full-time pastoral worker. sheena darcy works for the

international eucharistic congress. >> i've seen young people come bak tonow god's love i'veeen young people get more involved in the church. >> they're also searching for the basic things, belonging and love and, you know, acceptance and tolerance and all those elements go together in a spirituality. >> yes, there's been an ak a knowledgement that what happened was dreadful. it was absolutely dreadful. however we do also -- we do need to move on. >> whatever happens, the cath liblg church in ireld has already chang irrevocab. >> i do believe catholicism will continue, survive in ireland. i do believe the clerical church will not. that doesn't mean there won't be priests, of course there will be, but i don't think as a force it will ever again, in my lifetime certainly, will never have the power it had when i was a child. and i think that's a good thing because it abused its power massively and it became, i mean, a dictatorship in a democracy

which was answerable to nobody. >> i still have the view that, that what's happening is actually something quite healthy because the church will endp with will be a church of committed, passiona and dedicated people and who will live the gospels rather than talk about them. >> that undoubtedly means the irish catholic church will be smaller, but it may be, in a very different way, a stronger church. for religion and ethics newsweekly, i'm deborah potter in dublin. >> we have a story today from fred de sam lazaro about a woman in senegal, in west africa, a former peace corps volunteer, who is helping senegalese women abandon the painful, deeply traditional custom of female circumcision. the world health organization says three million girls a year are cut in this way, but molly melching and other aid workers have discovered how to persuade whole communities to give up

their ancient practice. >> in recent years, thousands of rural communities in senegal have come to extraordinary public rallies. they call them declaratio. they're e d claired an end to a deeply rooted practice rarely discussed in public and commonly called female circumcision. >> never in my wildest dreams could i have imagined that i would be sitting here years later, 13 years later, saying that 4,792 communities in senegal had abandoned. in the beginning it was just unthought of, unbelievable, because it was so taboo. >> molly melching found a group called tostan, which means

"breakthrough" in the local wolof language, in the early '90s. she had modest goals: to educate people about health and human rights, especially in rural areas and in local languages. tostan's work often begins with an ice-breaker, like an old movie. many in the audience have never watched a film. to overcome the language barrier, the selection is a buster keaton silent movie classic from 1923, and it's a hit. a more serious film followed, on vegetable gardening. it's all part of seminars on nutrition, health, basic human rights, and other issues-in groups, songs, dances and drama. >> she needs to be cut. all girls need that. >> it's proven to be one of the most promising attempts in history to wipe out what melching calls female genital cutting a practice that dates back 2,000 years. each year the world health organization says that up to 3 million girls in african are subjected to genital mutilation, and up to 140 million women live with its consequences.

>> yo can't hav a recognized marriage if she's not cut. >> that cut is a painful rite of passage for girls across a wide swath of predominantly islamic african and middle eastern countries, however, the practice goes back hundreds of years before islam and christianity, and also practiced in both faiths and religions native to this region. it is thought to have originated in the harems of ancient rulers to control women's fidelity or as a sign of chastit foros who had conspired to be consorts. >> those who were in the rest of society could move up, and you could marry someone who was more prestigious or had more money, more status, if you underwent this practice, because it was a

sign of good reputation, and as the years went on,t bece veryuch part of what was considered criteria for a good marriage. >> melching came to this west african nation as a student in the '70s, and later a peace corps volunteer. she stayed on to work on improving health education, which she found sorely lacking. >> when you see a friend that you've known for several months, and you've gone to her house for lunch, and then she tells you her child has some problem, and it's someone whose cast an evil spell on the child, the baby, and that she's going to take them to a religious leader to

get the spell taken off, and you don't know what to say. it turns out the baby was dehydrated. >> but from the health education, women began to understand infection and melching says they began to connect the dots. >> saying okay, we always thought they died of tetanus, maybe not. maybe it was the fgc operation that led to this, so suddenly, when they started to learn germ transmission, and the consequences of fgc, and how these infections occur, and why they had more problems in the childbirth than other women, who had not been cut, they started saying wait a minute. >> people used to be afraid to talk about this before, not anymore.

>> pow how did women in conservative patriarchal societies become able to speak out, especially on a sensitive sexual topic? melching says it's because tostan's approach from the very sta was to involvmen. >> we share our modules with the religious leaders so they see that everything we do is for the well-being of the community, the health, and all of these things are things that islam e spouses, and so they're very happy in general, but first of all they're happy because we start with them. we respect them. >> and that respect also carries over in the group's message on genital cutting. >> tostan found that using

practices that shame or blame people really was just the opposite of what would work in changing social norms. we know you love your daughter, and you're doing things because you love your daughter, but let's look at this and let's try to understand together exactly what are the consequences of this practice? but you are the ones who will have to make the decision, then suddenly people are willing to listen. they don't get defensive. it's far more effective than the approach of many aid groups, religious governments, and private, says princetown university professor gerry mackey. >> not hectoring or preaching but having pro and con discussions. when we think of an ideal way of making a change, we say it's democrat democratic. we all get together and talk it over and decide, what is the best thing to do? whereas some development approaches would, say, force them to do it, pay them to do it, trick them into doing it.

>> tostan's vol up tears and staff who conduct its seminars and meetings all hail from the local communities, often they are leaders and elders speaking from personal experience or anecdotes. diarre ba used to make a living as a female circumciser. >> i was part of this process. i felt bad. this is not right. i felt bad, but didn't know anything at the time. i had no learning. >> others have painful, vivid memories. brah saare was very close to an older sister growing up. he walked into her room one evening -- >> i saw her lying in a pool of blood i thought someone had really hurt her. . i screamed. my father explained to me. since then, even now i get goose bumps thinking about it. >> it's very painful. i will never-you ask if i can forget it. i can never forget the pain. so painful. >> she is a long-time campaigner

against genital cutting, and she's spared her 10-year-old daughter the trauma. yet before she became involved with tostan and early in her marriage, she was determined to keep up the tradition. even her own husband was opposed to genital cutting. >> she insisted that what she had to do it. there were so many problems if you didn't do it. if you cooked meals, no one would eat your food. it's because we didn't know. people told us that it was our religion. if you don't do it, you'll be going against your religion. all this is false. but i alone can't do this in the village. >> they say tostan has been able to insure they were not alone, that communities in which they intermarried were also thinking alike, tha their daughters would still be marriageable. the large declaration ceremonies have been critical. >> one part of bringing about a change like this is to get everyone to change at once, what we called coordinated abandonment.

everyone has to see that everyone else sees that everyone is changing. >> genital cutting is not the only tradition they want to change. many communities have vowed to end the frequent practi of allowi older men to may adolesce gir, acknowleing th the health isks d e girl human rhts. molly mulching says there's plenty of historical precedent for abrupt changes in social norms and attitudes. the illinois native sees a very current one with each visit home: smoking. >> people were smoking, and nobody said anything about it too much through the '50s, the '60s, and even the '70s. as people became aware of the harm that it causes, more and more people-there was a critical mass of people who started protesting, and it was amazing for me, coming from senegal to the united states to see how quickly things turned around. >> tostan's efforts have now expanded to 14 other african nations. for religion & ethics newsweekly, this is ed de sam lazaro in kaolacksenel. in others news, the church of england said this week it may

sell its $6 million share in rupert murdoch news corporation can unless the organization conducts a full and open inquiry into the recent phone hacking scandal. church leaders called the actions of murdoch's british tabloid, the news of the world, "utterly reprehensible and unethical. and finally, during its coverage of last month's u.s. open golf tournament, nbc ran a montage that included the pledge of allegiance to the flag. most of it. it left out the words "under god, indivisible. members of congress, among others, complained and nbc this week formally apologized. it said there was nothing ideological about the omission, and that the employees involved have been reprimanded. that's our program for now. i'm bob abernethy. you can follow us on twitter and facebook, find us on youtube, and watch us anytime, anywhere on smart phones and iphones. there's also much more on our web site. yocan comment on all of our stories and share them. audiond vid podcasts are also availle -join uat pbs. org. as we leave you, music from the liturgy of lament, for the victims of sex abuse and their families, at dublin's

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