In All Things

Took some last minute shuffling of flights owing to Washington winter storm wipeout (and more is on its way), but I have arrived at the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering. The event brings together diocesan and parish-based directors and supporters of social justice and peace offices for some motivational recuperation, capital hill lobbying and general information sharing. They also pore over the domestic and international issues that will be on the agenda in the coming year for folks working in Catholic social ministry. They will have plenty of time to do so this year as we are about to all be snowed in for the week.

I’m particularly sorry to have missed John Carr’s keynote because I wondered if he would respond personally to the attack campaign being launched by the American Life League and confreres (and eagerly embraced by right wing Catholic bloggers) regarding his past participation as board chairman with the Center for Community Change, a national community organizing advocacy, training and support organization. Carr left CCC in 2005 and since then it has adopted some rhetoric and positions at odds with Catholic teaching. Additionally a number of Catholic Campaign for Human Development funded community groups are listed as “partners” by the CCC, though that relationship indicates little more than they may have received CCC training or worked with CCC on specific anti-poverty campaigns, not that they endorse all CCC statements or campaigns.

At first glance the connections drawn by the ALL et al depict a deep ignorance about the nature of community organizing in the United States or its history and offer the kind of head-scratching guilt by association that would be familiar to folks who can remember Sen. Joe McCarthy and the regular House and Senate inquisitions during the Red Scare of the 1950s. Instead of lists of unidentified communist enemies, ALL and allied groups wave embarrassing CCC statements and attempt to backtrack them to assorted USCCB staff. I’m told John Carr only briefly touched on the controversy during his annual keynote speech opening the gathering but other voices from the USCCB have already stepped forward to defend Carr and by extension the USCCB and CCHD.

Carr told me some time after his speech: “I’ve spent my whole life trying to bring together social justice and pro-life, so to be attacked as somehow having undermined that is both unfair and hurtful.”

He was reluctant to say much else about the internet flame war erupting around his reputation except: “I would distinguish between those who have a real concern for the poor and wonder if we’re doing this the right way, those who simply disagree with the priorities and methods of CCHD and [those] who frankly have been attacking the bishops, the conference, the CCHD, and now me and they’ve never found anything good to say about the church’s [anti-poverty] work.

“The idea that the American bishops are soft or lax in their defense of unborn children is just ridiculous. You go down to the march for life . . . and you take away Catholic parishes, Catholic schools, Catholic bishops, its not a march it’s a small rally. For people that know me, the idea that I’m a secret agent for a prochoice issue . . .  and the idea that the America bishops are funding abortions and soft on gay marriage is just ludicrous.”

Carr worries the style of the attack suggests that “polarization in public life is now coming over to Catholic life.”

“We don’t need war rooms and attack ads in our community of faith,” he said. “We ought to give each other the benefit of the doubt. We ought to have civil discourse and not assume the worst of each other.

“Their new thing after four days of attacking me is that ‘this is not about John Carr.’ Well, I think that is insightful: This is not about John Carr, this is about the priorities of the poor and whether or not we are going to act on them. . . . When you do bottom up organizing instead of top down, it doesn’t always fit the neat categories, but my wish is that people would see what actually happens to people’s lives and communities as a result of this work.”

Kevin Clarke

It's nice to be reminded that the U.S. church has a position on peace (we're all for it, BTW) and that the U.S. and Russia still have much unfinished business related to the end of the Cold War and the final status of our absurd nuclear weapons stockpiles. Here's one time-ordinary of the U.S. Archdiocese for Military Services and now Archbishop of Baltimore Edwin O’Brien speaking at the Feb. 3-5 Global Zero Summit in Paris, a two-day conference of political, military, business and faith leaders strategizing on the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons. Exhorting a "future free of the nuclear threat,” O'Brien said:

Although we must always keep in sight the horizon of our efforts, a world without nuclear weapons, we must also take stock of where we are and focus on the next steps in front of us. For my own nation, this requires the successful negotiation and ratification of a START follow-on treaty with the Russian Federation, the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the adoption of a nuclear posture that rejects the first use of nuclear weapons or their use against non-nuclear threats.

It will not be easy. Nuclear weapons can be dismantled, but both the human knowledge and the technical capability to build weapons cannot be erased. A world with zero nuclear weapons will need robust measures to monitor, enforce and verify compliance. The path to zero will be long and treacherous. But humanity must walk this path with both care and courage in order to build a future free of the nuclear threat.

Kevin Clarke 

Gaza might not be the only thing under siege in the Middle East. Israeli democracy has taken a fair number of hits recently. A Zionist student organization, Im Tirtzu, partly bankrolled by the Christian Dispensationalist-Zionist (and non-pal to Catholics) John Hagee, has issued an inflammatory report condemning independent Israeli human rights organizations (and the Israeli agency responsible for some of their funding) for their “unpatriotic” assistance to the United Nations. A U.N. special reporting team last year investigated the behavior of the Israel Defense Forces during the Gaza incursion that began in late December 2008. Three brutal weeks later, Gaza’s infrastructure was in ruins and 1,400 were dead. Last September the controversial Goldstone report, the outcome of that investigation, suggested both Hamas and the IDF had probably committed human rights violations and war crimes in that spasm of violence. Israeli human rights groups had provided testimony and other assistance to Goldstone and his investigators. Now Israeli politicians are calling for, not an independent investigation of Goldstone’s allegations, but a witch-hunt of the human rights organizations which assisted the UN in a clear attempt to silence their critical, and critically necessary, voice within Israel.

In recent weeks two well known Israeli human rights advocates have been arrested or detained and interrogated by Israeli police because of their activities, and 13 Israeli human rights organizations have sent an urgent letter to the president, the Knesset speaker and the prime minister, protesting an “increasing and systematic campaign against human rights organizations” in Israel.

This dangerous environment has been years in the making and is complemented by a rising hard-right sentiment within the Israeli government and its political parties, the too-powerful illegal settlers movement and a growing tolerance for religious extremism within the IDF rank and file. Taken as a whole the confluence of such potent culture shifts surely endangers what’s left of the peace process, continues a process of dehumanizing Palestinians and now finally, predictably, threatens the viability of Israel democracy itself. These trends require careful attention now before they unleash volatile forces that could prove impossible to contain in the future.

Kevin Clarke

A Jan. 12 letter posted at the website of the Apostolic Visitation of Institutes of Women Religious in the United States requests that U.S. women major superiors reconsider their response or lack thereof to the recent questionnaire from the office (hat tip to Tom Fox at NCR). The letter came from Mother Mary Clare Millea, superior general of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Vatican’s choice to head up the three-year visitation of U.S. women religious congregations. Major Superiors of U.S. women religious congregations had been asked to respond to the questionnaire and return it by Nov. 20, 2009.

In her letter Mother Millea asked major superiors “who have not yet fully complied to prayerfully reconsider their response.” There has previously been some indication that religious congregations had balked at responding to the questionnaire. A spokesperson for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious said the LCWR had no “formal information” about how well women religious have responded to the questionnaire and that the LCWR was not tracking compliance.

Mother Millea’s office said it would have a clarifying statement on the issue tomorrow, but her appeal suggests that the three-phase visitation may be stalled in phase 2. (Phase 1 included dialogue with congregational leadership; phase 3 is scheduled to begin in April 2010 with on-site visits by teams of religious visits to a representative sample of institutes. Phase 2 was intended to be already concluded with the return of completed questionnaires.)

Sister Mary Waskowiak, President of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, said that her congregation had responded to the questionnaire by forwarding a copy of their constitution back to the visitation office and indicating where answers could be found to specific questions in the congregation’s annuarium, a regular status report to Rome. Sister Waskowiak believes as many as 100 other congregations across the country responded similarly. The foot-dragging by major superiors on the questionnaire could be interpreted as an attempt to stop the visiation, Sister Waskowiak said, “but it alternatively [could mean] at the least modify it. . . . this process is not right for us.” She thinks Mother Millea’s recent letter may indicate that she heard that message and may be seeking an opening to an alternative method of information gathering.

“Two things we are continuing to request,” said Sister Waskowiak, “is clarity on the origins of the visitation and the motivation behind it and [we are requesting] dialogue. And we know that is not the Vatican’s style, but if it were to happen what a watershed moment that would be in terms of the good relations among women, the religious congregations and the Vatican.”

In her renewed appeal, Mother Millea writes: “When I recently met with Cardinal Rodé, he assured me that the Holy Father continues to show his interest in and support of the Apostolic Visitation. The Cardinal was pleased to hear about the wholehearted and genuine responses of many congregations to the Questionnaire. However, I also shared with him my sadness and disappointment that not all congregations have responded to this phase of dialogue with the Church in a manner fully supportive of the purpose and goals of the Apostolic Visitation . . . I take this opportunity, then, to once again invite all major superiors who have not responded fully to the Questionnaire to do so.” Sister Waskowiak said the leadership of the U.S. Sisters of Mercy would be meeting Feb. 9 to formulate a response to Mother Millea’s renewed appeal for cooperation.

“We recognize that we have a responsibility to Rome,” said Sister Waskowiak, who argues that the resisting congregations are in fact compliant with their constitutions and the pertaining canon law in their response "and we do it graciously."

“What women religious groups are saying is that the instruments being employed are not satisfactory for us to be able to tell our story . . . We continue to speak from different paradigms of religious life.

“We believe we have a good story to tell and we would like to tell it; we know we are not perfect,” said Sister Waskowiak. But the level of secrecy the Vatican is maintaining about the visitation and how the congregations will be evaluated is “not matched by the transparency they are requesting of us. . . . I would hope for more dialogue.”

Just a few days after Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, speaking in Islamabad, Pakistan, called the Taliban part of Afghanistan's "political fabric," U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, told the Financial Times why he thought the U.S. troop surge could lead to a negotiated peace with the Taliban. FT reports that "by using the reinforcements to create an arc of secure territory stretching from the Taliban’s southern heartlands to Kabul, Gen McChrystal aims to weaken the insurgency to the point where its leaders would accept some form of settlement with Afghanistan’s government."

“As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there’s been enough fighting,” he told FT. “What I think we do is try to shape conditions which allow people to come to a truly equitable solution to how the Afghan people are governed.”

And despite America's difficult eight years of combat in Afghanistan and the Taliban's often brutal behavior when they were in power from 1996-2001, McChrystal did not rule out a governing role for the Islamic fundamentalists. McChrystal said: “I think any Afghans can play a role if they focus on the future, and not the past." McChrystal spoke to an FT reporter on his way to London to attend a Thursday conference with European allies intended to rally same around the general's "ambitious" counter-insurgency plans in Afghanistan.

Gates' and McChrystal's quasi-overture to Taliban leadership comes as Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai works on an ambitious plan of his own, a reconciliation package aimed at tempting fighters away from the Taliban by offering money and jobs to draw them back to civilian life. It is probably no coincidence the abrupt U.S. openness to a negotiated settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan was accompanied this week by the leak of a Dec. 22 briefing in Washington that detailed the growing reach and effectiveness of the Taliban resistance to the Karzai administration and his U.S. enablers. The problem is, with Americans suffering casualties in 2009 at twice the rate of 2008, with the U.S. public clearly growing restive with the war and unhappy about reports of corruption and incompetence out of Kabul, what would prompt the Taliban to negotiate now when time and momentum seem on their side? “You can kill Taliban forever," says McChrystal, "because they are not a finite number."

And it's one thing, of course, to invite the Taliban to the table. What to do with them when they get there is a whole other problem. Gates seems keenly aware: "The question is whether they are prepared to play a legitimate role in the political fabric of Afghanistan going forward, meaning participating in elections, meaning not assassinating local officials and killing families," he said. "The question is what do the Taliban want to make out of Afghanistan? When they tried before, we saw before what they wanted to make and it was a desert, culturally and every other way."

More on this from the NY Times.

The special election of Massachusetts Republican State Senator Scott Brown appears to doom the latest Congressional effort to broaden health services in America. If history is any guide it may be a decade before anyone tries again to rationalize America's health delivery service, offering effective care to all citizens and preventing the unfortunate from becoming bankrupted by bad luck. It's possible that Obama, Pelosi, Reid et al may press on with Congressional ping-pong aimed at reconciling the House and Senate versions with a faint hope of persuading Maine Senator Olympia Snowe to break party ranks and move the bill to the president's desk. It's more likely they may abandon all hope on health care at this point. Why bother with a bruising internecine fight over abortion and the booted public option when the outcome is so uncertain?

I do find myself wishing that Democrats could force the issue to a true Mr.-Smith-Goes-to-Washington-style filibuster instead of the filibuster fakery that is currently gridlocking Congress. It would be an inspiration to watch a lone Republican stalwart go up against the special interests among the poor, marginalized, uninsured U.S. working and middle classes in heroic oratory defending America's profit-glutted Big-Pharma and bonus-backslappers in for-profit health care's upper management. That's something no American school child would ever forget, assuming CSPAN could cover it.

U.S. Catholic leadership seem to have accepted the depressing prognosis on health care reform and are positioning themselves for whatever comes next. "The important thing to remember," said the Catholic Health Association's Sister Carol Keehan, "is that even if they throw the bills away and abandon the effort to achieve health reform, that still leaves a lot of people hurting." In other words just because the debate is over, well, the debate's not over with nearly 50 million without health insurance and those of us STILL facing pre-existing condition exceptions, ruinous lifetime care limits and escalating overall costs and co-pays that are draining family budgets.

Also ready to move on are the U.S. Bishops, who had been apparently still ready to go to the mattresses over ethical deficiencies they perceived in the compromise Nelson-Hatch-Casey amendment to the Senate proposal (I confess after multiple reads of Stupak and Nelson and apoplectic "progressive" attacks on same, I still don't understand how any of it would have practically worked), and now appear ready to join a colossal health-care do-over. "The bishops are not abandoning the health reform effort," said Kathy Saile of the USCCB. "But it clearly needs to be done in a different way [than the current bills] and we are very much interested in being a part of that conversation."

The question is do Americans have the mental toughness to go through that all over again or are we reaching a civic battle-fatigue on health care that will allow the economic timebomb of the health care status quo to keep ticking?

Given the Soviet-style party discipline evinced by the Republican Party on health care reform, we may have to go to a Bill Murray-ish Plan B. "Baby steps" anyone?

Catholic Relief Service workers in the field are reporting unprecedented devastation in Haiti’s capital city Port-au-Prince following yesterday’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake. Karel Zelenka, CRS’s country representative for Haiti told CRS spokesperson John Rivera the devastation is unlike anything he’s ever seen. “I’ve been in  earthquakes before,” Zelenka told Rivera. “This was a major earthquake and a direct hit [on the capital]. There must be thousands dead.”

“It is a disaster of the century,” he reported in a blog post. “We should be prepared for thousands and thousands of dead and injured."

Rivera described conditions in Port-au-Prince as “total chaos.” According to Rivera, “Communication is extremely difficult. Cell phones are out; landlines work intermittently.” At a CRS blog, Zelenka posted a description of what he was seeing in the streets: “We tried to organize this morning and contact UN, OFDA and Caritas. We might be running out of supplies ourselves—water and food. . . .  No organized rescue efforts yet—all done by individuals with bare hands. Damage incredible all around, but our offices seem fine.

“Some major buildings are gone—the hotel Montana, the National Palace etc. All AA flights canceled until this weekend. UN has only 4 helicopters, two were seen early this morning doing surveys, otherwise no movement of any rescue vehicles/people. Most in a [state of] shock.…On radio stations only wild music. People have been screaming and praying all over the place throughout the night."

The Red Cross is reporting that 3 million Haitians have been affected by the quake and President Obama describes scenes from the capital as “incomprehensible.” Haiti's first lady, Elisabeth Debrosse Delatour, reported that "most of Port-au-Prince is destroyed" and that many government buildings had collapsed. According to the Associated Press, the body of the the archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot, has been discovered among the ruins of the archdiocese office. Miot was 63.

Rivera said the U.S. military is mobilizing to respond to the crisis, but in the meantime it is the many relief and disaster agencies already on the ground in Haiti who are bearing the brunt of the emergency relief effort. Fortunately CRS facilities were undamaged. Rivera says because the Caribbean island nation is so frequently visited by natural disasters like 2008’s gauntlet of hurricanes and tropical storms, CRS has learned to keep emergency supplies on hand. Rivera says the agency has enough right now to care for 1,000 families in the short term, but much more will be needed soon. CRS has already committed $5 million to the relief effort and Rivera thinks that figure will likely rise.

CRS has been working in Haiti for 55 years and its program there is the agency's third largest. It employs about 340 in Haiti. According to Rivera, all CRS international staff have been accounted for. He thinks many of the local CRS workers may have been out of the capital on their way home from work when the earthquake struck shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday, centered about 10 miles (15 kilometers) southwest of Port-au-Prince, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Rivera said most of the devastation appears focused on the capital, with communities in the countryside relatively unharmed.

Just a few days after a Malaysian court ruling allowing a Catholic newspaper to use the word Allah to refer to God seemed to offer the nation’s minority Christians a small civil victory, the government has reinistated its “Allah” ban among non-Muslims. Malaysian officials are apparently trying to get ahead of Muslim anger in the streets in the aftermath of the court decision. There have been days of street demonstrations protesting the ruling. The nation of 28 million is 68 percent Muslim. The war over the word has roots in the peculiarities of Malay Muslim culture, other Islamic states show little concern over non-Muslim use of "Allah," but this sudden spike in sectarian tension may also be attributable to recent efforts by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to shore up support among Malay ethnics.

On Dec. 31, the Kuala Lumpur High Court overruled the ban, which was instated three years ago, affirming that it was unconstitutional, arguing that the word "Allah" is not exclusive to Islam. It granted the  Catholic daily Herald, which was using the word as a translation for God in  the Malay language section of the periodical, permission to print  "Allah."

But, according to the Zenit news service, protesting Muslim groups say that Christians and other minorities should not use "Allah" for "fear of confusing  Muslims." Soon after the government reversal, an explosion damaged the administrative offices of Metro  Tabernacle Church, a Protestant church in Kuala Lumpur, and Molotov cocktails were thrown into several other churches, including the Catholic Church of the Assumption in Petaling  Jaya. Fortunately, no injuries were reported.

The issue was further clouded by the Malaysian home ministry secretary-general Mahmood Adam. At a briefing aimed at keeping representatives of foreign missions informed about government efforts to respond to anti-Christian violence, Adam helpfully explained that indeed “Allah” was a word reserved only for Muslims in Malaysia. “They wanted a better understanding of how the word 'Allah' is applied in Malaysia in comparison with, say, Indonesia,” Adam told reporters. “We explained why in some countries it is used across the board while in other landscapes like Malaysia, it is exclusive to Islam.

In a cooling off effort, Father Lawrence Andrew, editor  of the Herald, said the newspaper will not use the word  Allah "until the judiciary issues the final ruling."

Let's hope (Inshallah) the "who owns" 'Allah'" craze dies down in Malaysia before it spreads elsewhere in the Islamic world. Maybe the nation's Buddhists can negotiate a custody settlement between the Christians and Muslims. In the meantime, "The Son of Allah" weeps.

David Gibson puts together a useful analysis of the media's handling of an apparent divergence of opinion between the U.S.C.C.B. and the Catholic Health Association on the health care reform package (see Jim Martin's previous post on this) and the possible use of federal money to pay for abortions it may or may not be allowing. Are the CHA and religious orders which administer hospitals breaking ranks with the bishops or is the NY Times blowing the division out of all proportion to reality? Yes, says Gibson:

So which is it -- division or distortion? . . . There is . . . a bit of the 'good cop, bad cop' routine going on . . . with the bishops tending to pursue the perfect over the good and criticizing any compromise as 'deficient' and unworthy of support from Catholics. . . . On the other hand, the CHA and the religious orders of nuns that generally operate Catholic hospitals tend to be more pragmatic, weighing particular problems with the greater good that can be achieved and focusing on the political process as a way to resolve any problems either now or through future legislation. It is a difference one often sees between pastors who often deal with people where they are and bishops who often deal in abstractions and whose priority is to defend principles from erosion. Both can be effective approaches in political negotiations. But there is also little doubt that Keehan and the Catholic hospitals, like many Catholic activists promoting the church's social justice teachings, are far more supportive than the hierarchy of Obama's agenda and see the prospect of health care reform as representing a major, albeit imperfect, advance in the common good.

Determined to locate something positive to say before the editorial close of 2009, this reporter did not have to poke around the 'net too long before finding news to be happy-new-yearish about: despite the bad economy and high unemployment, national crime stats continued to trend downward in 2009. According to the FBI, for the first half of 2009, U.S. law enforcement agencies reported a 4.4 percent decline in the number of violent crimes—murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault—and, perhaps more surprising in light of the 17 percent real unemployment rate, a bigger drop of 6.1 percent for property crimes like burglary and car theft. There's reason to believe that the nation's lower crime trend continued when the second half of the year's stats are compiled in a few months. One-time murder capital USA New York last year recorded the lowest number of homicides in its history (or at least since such record-keeping began in the 1960s): from a record 2,245 homicides in 1990 to 2009's all-time low of 461 homicides. Even Chicago, which has had a fairly rotten performance on homicide in recent years with per capita rates twice or more above New York's, suffered 11 percent fewer homicides in 2009 at 453. Let's hope the number doesn't budge over the last few days of the year.

2009 was also a good year for U.S. law enforcement with 124 fatalities, the fewest since 1959.

What gives? The editors of the Oregonian ponder the welcome crime trend, citing better policing, longer prison sentences for repeat offenders, maybe even the unhappy collateral effects of the increasing legion of stay-at-home jobless, keeping an eye on the street. Ultimately, however, they conclude: "None of these explanations is entirely satisfactory. All of them may hide a simpler, more important truth about the easy assumptions about unemployment and lawbreaking. The conventional wisdom may just be wrong: Good people who lose their jobs do not inevitably turn to crime."

We are a far cry from the era of the juvenile superpredator that was famously (mal)predicted in the early 1990s (apologies John D., though I know you are pleased as punch to be wrong on this one). Here's to more good news on diminishing crime in 2010. Have a Happy and safe New Year!

I had myself a tranquil little Christmas this weekend with two civilized family gatherings (i.e., no one Tarzan-swung a chandelier through a bay window), no traditional child tantrums around the tree and everyone generally satisfied with the weekend's offerings and observations with no ER visits or speed dials to The Nanny. Not watching the television news or picking up the Times may have helped foster that apparently foolish sense of seasonal serenity. While I made merry, the world went a little madder.

I completely missed the papal tackle at midnight Mass at the Vatican, and this morning I've been watching with fear and trembling YouTube snippets of the people on the streets now throughout Iran, as a previously large but perhaps sociologically narrow opposition movement has exploded across culture, class and age distinctions in Iran. Some of the most vociferous opposition rallies are now being held in "conservative" provinces and resistance to Ayatollah Khamenei and the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regime is escalating at a breathtaking pace. The decision to bring the hammer down during the annual Shi'ite observation of Ashoura and the brutal murder of a nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi—and later theft of the nephew's corpse—appears to have ignited widespread discontent which has been smoldering since the fraudulent re-election of Ahmadinejad in June. Where this will lead is hard to tell, but commentators are already comparing the unrest to the original Palestinian intifada and there is a striking resemblance to the weeks of street disturbances which finally led to the capitulation of the Shah in 1979. Perhaps Ahmadinejad's upcoming state visit to Tajikistan will provide a welcome—on all sides—opportunity for him to get out of Dodge. Or Iranian hardliners could try tightening their grip even harder. They might want to discuss that strategy with the current Shah, His Imperial Majesty Reza Shah II. They can reach him at his home in exile in the United States.

Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic perhaps offers the best track on events in Iran while the U.S. internet and cable news outlets appear transfixed by the admittedly incredible breakdown of whatever passes for our high-tech airport security. It works so well a Nigerian terrorist managed to get on a Detroit-bound flight without baggage, after purchasing tickets with cash, and apparently with high explosives clumsily concealed on his body. Perhaps it is time to seriously consider whether Israeli style security procedures have become necessary for international, perhaps even domestic travel, into and throughout the United States. Yes, folks that means no carry-ons and thorough pat-downs before boarding, a small price to pay for, well, the rest of your life.

Capping my depressing news read today was the horrible images and reports emerging from the mayhem in Pakistan as a car bomb detonated among a group of Shi'ite worshippers in Karachi.