The Washington Times is disputing a former editor’s complaint that he was forced to attend a mass wedding of the Unification Church (which owns the newspaper). And Catholic bishops are are rejecting charges (again) that their central anti-poverty initiative funds leftist and anti-church programs.

Disaffected Lutherans who can’t abide a decision to allow openly gay clergy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America say they will form their own church body, not just an independent free-standing synod within the ELCA. Speaking of the disaffected, the Italian magazine L’Espresso details late-night conversations between the archbishop of Canterbury and a high-level Catholic cardinal over the pope’s offer to shelter Anglican dissidents.

One of two copies of Zondervan’s handwritten Bible is up for sale on eBay and those atheist bus signs have finally made their way to the North American center of godlessness: Portland, Ore. (just kidding, Portland).

A professor at Washington state’s Gonzaga University is launching a new program in “hate studies” and a gay reparative therapy program in the once-progressive Archdiocese of Minneapolis-St. Paul is coming under fire. (Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt told our Dan Burke yesterday that preliminary findings that gay priests did not cause the sex abuse scandal are meaningless.) Catholic bishops, wrapping up their annual meeting in Baltimore, discussed ways to tighten the reins on wayward Catholic colleges.

South of the border, a battle over legalized abortion is heating up in Mexico (Mexico City allows it in the first trimester; other states are moving to ban it altogether). Overseas, the Vatican has unveiled a restored 6th-century reliquary that is said to hold bits of Jesus’ cross. Also in Italy, the Dalai Lama predicts a setback in the Tibetan freedom cause after his death, but says progress will nonetheless continue.