The Vatican has issued its long-expected universal rules on sexual abuse — the new norms double the statute of limitations, make possessing child porn a crime but does not require bishops to report problem priests to the police. The revised rules also add “attempted ordination of a woman” into the same criminal code as raping minors.
Meanwhile, U.N. officials say the Vatican is 13 years late in delivering a report on child rights. The Episcopal bishop of Erie, Pa., (the youngest bishop in the U.S. church, BTW) is encouraging victims of a deceased bishop to come forward.
Religion Dispatches wonders whether the future Mr. and Mrs. Levi Johnston will still be role models for young evangelicals. Speaking of evangelical icons, a Pennsylvania lawmaker wants to know why work permits were issued to Kate Gosselin‘s sextuplets for her reality TV show.
People in Cleveland (long dubbed America’s poorest big city) are having trouble finding the money to hold funerals. Some Kentucky kids are spending their summer at “Vacation Liberty School” to learn about America’s Christian roots, a la Glenn Beck. Congress debated the biblical roots ofimmigration reform, and didn’t find any easy answers. The AP says worshippers may be in danger of falling debris from aging sanctuaries.
U.S. Muslims are launching a comprehensive survey of American mosques. That Barack Obama/Adolf Hitler/Vladimir Lenin Tea Party billboard in Iowa has been taken down; organizers called it a “bad idea.” Also in the category of bad ideas, a Puerto Rican spiritual healer is facing charges of negligent homicide after he dropped a candle into an alcohol bath where a woman was undergoing a Santeria ritual.
CBS and NBC rejected an ad from an independent Republican group to “kill the Ground Zero mosque.” An Arizona court rejected the case of a man who couldn’t get a job at a hospital because he refused to give his Social Security number (he thinks it’s the mark of the beast). Authorities dropped charges against two openly gay Iraq War veterans who chained themselves to the White House fence to protest the Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy.
Argentina yesterday became the first Latin American country to legalize gay marriage, despite heavy opposition from the Catholic Church and the Mormons.
In neighboring Venezuela, strongman Hugo Chavez wants to “examine” his country’s relations with the Vatican (and not in a good way), adding for good measure that the pope “isn’t God’s emissary on earth” (that would be Chavez himself, apparently). Relations between the Vatican and China, however, are slowly improving after both sides approved of a new bishop.
