Pope Benedict XVI is back home in Rome after a four-day trip to Scotland and England. Yesterday he beatified Cardinal Henry Newman, one of the church’s most celebrated converts (supposedly they’re already investigating the second miracle he’ll need for sainthood). My favorite headline from the trip: “The pope has routed his enemies and brought joy to the faithful.” The Vatican declared the trip “a great success.” British officials say that plot to kill the pope was not “credible.“
Meanwhile, here’s some actual real news: President Obama and the first of the First Family actually went to church yesterday (at St. John’s Episcopal, near the White House).
As POTUS and FLOTUS were at church, U.S. Muslim groups met in New York to try to formulate a united response to the broohaha over the so-called Ground Zero mosque and the Quran burn that wasn’t. Sojourner’s Jim Wallis breaks down the series of events that led to Terry Jones calling off the Quran burn in Gainesville. And watch out, Tampa-St. Pete: Jones says he’s thinking of picking up and moving your way.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, meanwhile, advised her country that “Mosques, for example, are going to be a more prominent part of our cities than they were before,” she said.
A slight majority (53%) of Americans say the Constitution “establishes a Christian nation,” according to a new First Amendment Center poll, and three in four support a National Day of Prayer.
Some missing sect members (who weren’t really missing; they were just off praying) were found in California. Six members of a New York church were killed, including the pastor, when the back tire on their church ban blew out and sent the van flying; eight others were injured.
The Archdiocese of Minneapolis-St. Paul is trying to put the kabosh on a “reform” synod sponsored by an independent lay group.They’re also trying to put the breaks on any effort to legalize gay marriage, while the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America welcomed in three lesbian Minneapolis-area pastors who had been not welcome under the old rules.
There’s a battle brewing in Texas over plans to strip all textbooks of “pro-Islamic, anti-Christian” biases; the state Board of Education meets this Friday. Outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens says he won’t be praying for his own health on Friday, when people are scheduled to bow their heads on his behalf as he battles cancer.
The NYT takes the temperature of Belgium‘s battered Catholic flock, and finds relations with the hierarchy decidedly frosty. Swedes are trying to figure out what’s next after a far-right (and anti-Muslim) party won enough seats in parliament to throw things into disarray; neither the majority center-right nor the minority left want to work with the far-right Sweden Democrats.
