A Catholic priest in Australia set up a drive-through confessional, with combo deals of the seven deadly sins (though it costs extra for super-sized gluttony). Turns out the “pit-stop penance” was all just a big April Fools joke.
It seems like it was only yesterday: tomorrow marks the sixth anniversary of the death of JP2. But, in near record time, he’ll be beatified a month from today. American funerals and eulogies, meanwhile, are getting a little more honest, according to the WSJ.
Out in the Twin Cities, they’re fighting over the release of the names of 33 Catholic priests who have been credibly accused of abuse; church officials say the men are all either dead or defrocked. Speaking of defrocked, peace activist Rev. Ray Bourgeois will likely get booted from the priesthood if he doesn’t recant by Sunday.
After U.S. Catholic bishops blasted a feminist nun’s book on new ways of understanding God, it shot to the top of the best-seller list on Amazon (h/t: NCR). And there’s a warm spot in eternity for the goon who stole a elderly nun’s purse inside a church after he asked for a drink of water.
A group of federal employees wants the National Park Service to hurry up already and make a decision about religious language on displays in national parks. A group of Quakers in NYC isn’t happy that a Quaker day school charges $32,870 for tuition.
The ACLU is suing to allow a Native American student in Louisiana to grow his hair long for religious reasons, and a student in San Diego is suing to bring his Bible to class. A playground spat on Staten Island spilled over into the courtroom when a student was charged with a hate crime after allegedly trying to rip the headscarf off a Muslim classmate.
Real life is starting to imitate art out in Utah where a nasty turf battle over control of a polygamist Mormon sect looks like something straight out of Big Love‘s Juniper Creek.
Mike Huckabee apparently wants Americans to be forced “at gunpoint” to listen to everything ever uttered by David Barton, a leading proponent of the idea that America was and always should be a “Christian nation.” A Southern Baptist gadfly and birther proponent is headed to court to argue that POTUS isn’t really an American citizen.
In the latest case of Presbyterian Judicial Ping-Pong, a lesbian minister’s conviction was upheld in charges she performed same-sex marriages, but she says it aint over yet.
File this under Ironic: two top officials in the breakaway Diocese of Fort Worth (which cut ties with the Episcopal Church) are now breaking away themselves to join the special umbrella group that the Vatican set up for dissident Anglicans/Episcopalians.
Don’t try to sneak into St. Peter’s Basilica with more than $14,000 in your pocket because you’re gonna need to declare that under new anti-money laundering rules.
A leader of the Catholic right isn’t happy that Catholic Relief Services is smart enough not to try distributing Bibles in war-ravaged Sudan. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan isn’t happy that the U.S. is bombing his pal (and benefactor) Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.
The Wall Street Journal, for some reason, wants to know if you think condoms in the majority-Catholic Philippines should be prescription-only; one astute WSJ reader suggests, “Only the flavored ones.”
