Tidings

P:The devaluation of the dollar is going to hurt many U.S. churches in their overseas missionary efforts.

Budget squeezes in the past several years have already forced some trimming of missions, and the number of missionaries has dipped slightly, to about 40,000. Further cutbacks probably lie ahead. Mission boards are facing an average reduction of at least 5% in their overseas purchasing power. In Japan, which ranks second only to Brazil in U.S. mission activity, the drop could run as much as 17%. A spokesman for the biggest U.S. mission board, the Southern Baptists', called devaluation the "worst dollar pinch since the Depression" and estimated an immediate loss in Southern Baptist spending power of $1.5 million.

P: What kind of potential priest reads Playboy? The Order of the Most Holy Trinity, a 770-year-old Roman Catholic order of priests and brothers who work in prisons and among migrant workers and the retarded, is finding out.

Vocations Director Father Joseph F. Lupo placed a $10,000, full-page recruiting ad in the January issue of Playboy.

Jowl-by-cheek, as it were, with a gallery of Playmates of the year, the ad pictures two earnest young men and says:

"You who have love to give and the courage to offer it, come work with your brothers." So far, says Lupo, a "gratifying number" of responses has poured into the Trinitarians' U.S. headquarters in Pikesville, Md., more than for any ad the order has ever run in more conventional outlets. The tactic has drawn some grumbles from within the order, but Father Lupo says: "I wanted to reach college guys and to get the most mileage for my advertising dollar." It remains to be seen whether the Playboy recruits--if they persist in their interest--will gladly embrace one of the most austere of priestly disciplines: celibacy. P: For observant Jews, the term kosher applies not only to what foods may be eaten and when, but to the methods used in the preparation of food and the slaughter of animals. Kashrut (dietary law) dictates that an acceptable animal, such as a cow or lamb, must be conscious and must be quickly slashed across the throat by a sharp instrument held in the steady hand of a specially trained, God-fearing person (often a rabbi) who takes the animal's life only with compassion and reluctance. Because this ritual is deemed humane by the Government, kosher slaughtering is exempted from a provision of the Humane Slaughter Act of 1958 that requires the animal to be stunned before being killed. It is not, however, exempted from a federal requirement that the animal, for sanitary reasons, be shackled and hoisted off the ground before the death stroke. Thus under kosher procedure the conscious animal may have a few moments of pain and terror before the slaughter. Last week Manhattan Lawyer Henry Mark Holzer, a born Jew who describes himself as an atheist, filed a federal suit charging that the exemption for kosher slaughter is not only inhumane but unconstitutional, on the grounds that it violates the principle of separation of church and state. Jews doubt that Holzer's suit will succeed. Meantime, a new slaughtering pen, patented earlier by the A.S.P.C.A. and approved by rabbis, may resolve the nonconstitutional issues. Using a sort of total harness, it lifts the animal slightly without causing it pain.

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