Update on Vatican Instruction; the science of Christmas music; Amish puppies

Vatican correspondent Stacy Meichtry leads Thursday's RNS report with an update on the Vatican document on homosexuality: The ordination of gay priests is valid, but they should not lead Catholic seminaries, according to a newly disclosed cover letter accompanying a Vatican Instruction on homosexuality. As U.S. bishops wonder how much discretion they have in interpreting and implementing the Instruction, released Tuesday (Nov. 29), the cover letter appears to communicate that the Vatican expects concrete steps to be taken. It says gay priests with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" should not be appointed by bishops to seminary teaching and management positions. The letter was not made public with the Instruction, which bars men with "deep-seated" homosexuality from becoming priests. Catholic News Service, the official news agency of the U.S. Bishops' Conference, published excerpts of the letter Wednesday.

Just as we're beginning to hear Christmas music everywhere we go, Adelle M. Banks writes about the planning that goes into deciding which songs will be played where: It's that time of year again, when "Silent Night" or "Jingle Bells" greets you when you turn on the radio, walk into a shopping mall or head down a city street. What you hear -- whether traditional and religious or secular and contemporary -- depends on where you are and on careful planning by the programmers, retailers and musicians who bring it to your listening ears. There's even an organization that studies these musical matters. Last year, Media Monitors began tracking the songs played by the 50 all-Christmas stations in the top 50 markets between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And though no religious tunes were part of its top "Christmas Ten," the words "Savior's birth" and "angels" pop up quite often on the airwaves.

Brian T. Murray goes to Lancaster, Pa., to report on the growing business of dog breeding in the Amish community: A few scattered pumpkins dot the muddy fields where bearded men in wide-brimmed hats lead teams of shaggy plow horses tilling the soil. It is autumn in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania's Amish country, and the fields that sustain the simple lifestyle are mostly bare. But one crop -- the most important crop to some -- remains: puppies. "They're more expensive now because of Christmas coming up," said a bonneted young girl, barely 10, who cheerfully greeted visitors to her picturesque dairy farm. Bred for bulk and retail sale, puppies are a growing cash crop for hundreds of farmers in and around Lancaster County, where Amish and Mennonite settlers from Switzerland and Germany arrived in the early 1700s in search of religious freedom. Critics call it factory farming of dogs.