Ok, then. After a week off, we are back in the saddle, a little older, and a lot sadder for having lost our fairy godmother, Deborah Howell, on Friday. She will be greatly missed by all of us here at RNS. UPDATE: GetReligion has a nice post on Deborah’s tireless quest to convince mainstream journalists to take religion seriously.

In other news, the five American Muslims detained in Pakistan deny that they planned to carry out terrorist attacks. One of them did tell the AP, however, that “We are jihadists, and jihad is not terrorism.” Hard to parse what he meant by that without following up.

The San Francisco Chronicle takes a look at the Catholic bishops’ new directives on caring for comatose patients. This new policy received little media attention at the bishops’ meeting last fall, but with more than 600 Catholic hospitals in the U.S., it’s anything but academic.

Megapastor Rick Warren asked for $900,000 to cover a purpose-driven deficit; he got $2.4 million. The money will be used for the California church’s food pantry, homeless ministry, and counseling groups, according to Saddleback.

Detroit salt miners have installed a 3-foot-tall statue of St. Barbara, the patroness of salt. Just kidding, she’s the patron saint of miners, actually. “It’s a reminder we’re on Earth for a short period of time,” said E.Z. Manos, vice president of the mining company. “Most of us want a good afterlife.”

Just when we thought he was out … James Dobson announced that he will host a daily radio show with his son in 2010.

Fox news talking head Brit Hume said Tiger Woods should drop Buddhism because “I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith.” The buddhasphere is, for the most part, taking a humorous approach to Hume’s comments. It’s true that many forms of Buddhism do not offer a diety who forgives and redeems. For many Buddhists, redemption must be earned (or, more accurately, karma erased) by the penitent himself. A famous example of this is “The Life of Milarepa,” a Tibetan legend about a murderer who becomes a Buddhist saint. *

A number of erudite religion commentators, including the Rev. James Martin and Martin Marty, bid farewell to Beliefs, Peter Steinfels’ NYT column.

Speaking of the Times, their man in Africa investigated the role of American evangelicals in Uganda’s anti-gay laws. A Somali man has been charged with two counts of attempted murder for attacking the Danish cartoonist who drew the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. Interestingly, CBS news blocked out the image in their report Saturday night. Wonder if other news organizations did the same.

A personal aide to Pope Benedict XVI visited the mentally disturbed woman who tackled the pontiff on Christmas eve. A Shiite mourning ceremony has become a flashpoint of political tension between Saudis and Iranians.

Finally, for those of you hoping that 2010 will be more peaceful than its predecessor, Cuban Santeria priests evidently have some bad news. They say 2010 will be a year of political and social unrest, and that an inordinate number of political leaders will die.

*That’s Milarepa at the top left, listening to a Fox.