NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

      WASHINGTON, DC (CWNews.com) - On the same day as the US House releases the Independent Counsel's report on possible impeachable offenses by President Bill Clinton, the president apologized to religious leaders at the National Prayer Breakfast, and for the first time apologized to Monica Lewinsky.

      Clinton told the assembled priests, ministers, rabbis, and imams that he acknowledges his sin and has asked for forgiveness. "I don't think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned," he said. "It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow that I feel is genuine first and most important my family, also my friends, my staff, my cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family and the American people."

      He added that to be forgiven, he needs to do more than express sorrow. "If my repentance is genuine and sustained, and if I can maintain both a broken spirit and a strong heart, then good can come of this for our country as well as for me and my family," he added.

      The gathered religious leaders were split in their reaction to the president's troubles. "It's time for compassion. Regardless of what he's done, he's still a child of God," said the Rev. Barbara King, founder-minister of the nondenominational Hillside International Truth Center Inc. in Atlanta. But Southern Baptist leaders have said they will call for disciplinary action by the president's Southern Baptist church in Arkansas against him. "I would just say the church cannot be silent. That would be cowardice," R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said during a news conference Thursday in Louisville, Kentucky.