Pope Benedict XVI held meetings today over the fate of the Legionaries of Christ (photo, left), the conservative order that was devastated by abuse and out-of-wedlock children involving founder Marcial Maciel. The NYT says the abuse scandal spreading around the world is producing “nothing less than an epochal shift” for the Catholic Church. Washington state priest was found stabbed to death in Venezuela.
NPR’s legal correspondent Nina Totenberg parses the Supreme Court’s church-state jurisprudence after Wednesday’s ruling that the Mojave Cross can stay; the LA Times calls the ruling “a blow to the First Amendment.” A church-state watchdog group says a cross on the motto of a Colorado Army hospital needs to go.
Hawaii, which sparked the gay marriage discussion waaaaay back in 1993, may or may not (depending on the governor’s signature) approve same-sex unions for gay couples. Prosecutors backed off a life-sentence request for former kosher slaughterhouse chief Shalom Rubashkin, instead recommending 25 years (much to the relief of Jewish groups). Students at (predominantly Jewish) Brandeis University are all verklempt over the choice of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren as graduation speaker.
Gotham’s last remaining Catholic hospital, St. Vincent’s in Greenwich Village, has closed. A wannabe nun is running in the Pittsburgh marathon to raise funds to retire her student loan debt so she can enter her order debt-free.
A bill to (sort of) allow prayer in Florida schools is now headed to newly independent Gov. Charlie Crist. The new head of (historically Baptist) Wake Forest Divinity School is a UCC-ordained woman; Southern Baptist Al Mohler calls it a “unambiguous signal and sign of the future,” and I’m guessing not in a good way. The Christian music industry is confronting its gay stars (or maybe it’s the other way around?).
Catholic bishops in India have adopted a “zero tolerance” approach to sexually abusive priests and sent it to the Vatican for approval. A church dispute over abortion threatens to derail Kenya‘s new constitution.The WSJ rediscovers the story about the lack of vultures in India to consume the bodies of dead Zoroastrians. A British judge said religious beliefs have no place in civil law when he threw out the case of a Christian marriage counselor who refused to work with same-sex couples.
Belgium moved toward becoming the first European country to ban the full-face veil for Muslim women (a federal judge also ruled that a Michigan judge did not violate a Muslim woman’s rights when he ordered her to remove her veil). And Iraq would like the haggadahs and Torah scrolls seized by U.S. troops by in 2003 returned, please.
