Politico says the so-called Ground Zero mosque is driving a wedge between the anti-mosque GOP (some worry that could backfire) and their Tea Party allies who want to keep the focus on taxes and government spending. Some Republicans, meanwhile, are calling President Obama an “elitist” who is “unsensitive” to 9/11 families over his muted support for the mosque.
The NYT’s MoDo says Obama “fumbled” the political football that is the mosque, and WaPo’s Kathleen Parker says build the damn thing already. Developers say they have no plans to move the disputed project to another site.
A Pennsylvania company has signed drilling leases to hunt for natural gas beneath Catholic cemeteries in and around Pittsburgh. A North Carolina court ruled that state officials were wrong to delegate police powers to security personnel at Presbyterian-affiliated Davidson College because it’s a religious institution. Hispanic evangelicals warned the GOP that they risk forever losing Latino voters if they mess with the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.
The Catholic bishops’ film office has given two thumbs down to Julia Roberts‘ new “Eat Pray Love” for apparently doing more eating than praying during her character’s stop in Rome. Roberts, meanwhile, says she’s done talking about religion. And Dr. Laura Schlessinger plans to be done talking on the radio at the end of the year.
The NYT picks apart the new book, “The Tenth Parallel”, about Muslims-Christian coexistence (or not) by Eliza Griswold, daughter of former Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold. Miss USA Rima Fakih (the first Muslim to hold the crown) is on her way to the Miss Universe pageant in Las Vegas, but she opted for a more demur backside topless promo photo instead of full-frontal: “I’m Arab, I’m Muslim and I didn’t want to disappoint many people,” she said.
The mayor of Mexico City has threatened to sue Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniquez if he doesn’t apologize for implying that the mayor bribed the Supreme Court to uphold gay adoptions. Pope Benedict XVI says heaven is where God lives, not some place up in the clouds. A skateboarding priest in Hungary has become a sensation on the series of tubes, and some 10,000 bikers made a pilgrimage to western France for the festival of the Madonna of the Bikers.
