As the House prepares to vote today on repealing last year’s health care law, religious groups are signing petitions and rallying to support/oppose the mammoth legislation. The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, wrote Congress a long letter outlining the bishops’ priorities, but didn’t take a position on the repeal.
Tribune’s Washington bureau tick-tocks President Obama’s Arizona speech and finds he relied on help from pastors and Scripture. Before Obama’s next big speech – the State of the Union address on Jan. 25 – the National Council of Churches wants the president to remember his pledge to cut poverty in half.
The Vatican tried to play damage control on the letter to Irish bishops that appears to warn clerics not to report clergy sexual abuse to civil authorities. The NYT and AP say the letter undermines Vatican claims, particularly in U.S. courts, that Rome never urged local bishops not to cooperate with police. Since the Archdiocese of Boston won’t do it, a lawyer who has represented hundreds of sexual abuse victims plans to release a list of more than 100 alleged abusers.
The Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs launched a 12-step program for gays and lesbians.
The Supreme Court rejected the umpteenth appeal from religious conservatives to overturn D.C.’s gay marriage law. The head of the Smithsonian said it’s “painful” to be criticized for removing a video of ants walking on a crucifix from an exhibit on gay artists after conservative religious leaders and politicians raised a ruckus.
Alabama’s brand-new governor (pic at top left), on his inauguration day, hastened to inform Alabamans that “anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.” The Anti-Defamation League declared themselves shocked.
A top dog in the Russian Orthodox Church proposed a dress code for women, saying there are too many that “confuse the street with striptease.” He also said that woman who wear mini-skirts and get drunk are at fault if they’re raped. Muslim leaders in Chechnya ordered all couples who plan to marry to take AIDS tests. Russia is launching a Muslim TV channel to promote tolerance, Reuters reports.
Four Sikhs were barred from a Quebec National Assembly hearing on religious freedom because they refused to remove their religiously mandated ceremonial daggers.
The University of Kentucky agreed to pay an evangelical astronomer $125,000 to make his religious discrimination suit go away. A 12-year-old Muslim girl in Maryland was benched for the first half of her basketball game after the ref said her headscarf posed a safety risk. A Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist says U.S. military leaders are members of secretive Catholic orders and bent on Christianizing the Middle East. The site of Jesus’ baptism is surrounded by land mines.
