Wednesday’s Religion News Roundup

Two teachers at a Catholic high school in New Jersey were arrested for having sex with female students on an overseas trip. A Baltimore court threw out a suit filed by two siblings alleging that a Roman Catholic order of priests should have stopped an affair between their mother and the priest they claim is […]

Two teachers at a Catholic high school in New Jersey were arrested for having sex with female students on an overseas trip.

A Baltimore court threw out a suit filed by two siblings alleging that a Roman Catholic order of priests should have stopped an affair between their mother and the priest they claim is their father.

Put this on your to-do list: schedule a priest for last rites before you need him, because they’re getting harder and harder to find.


WaPo weighs whether or not Terry Jones‘ Gainesville church is, in fact, a “cult” in the classical sense. Jones said he doesn’t plan to burn any more Qurans, but you never know what might happen if a Quran and a pack of matches were to fall into his lap.

The LAT profiles Sharif El-Gamal, the ambitious young developer behind the Park51 Islamic center near Ground Zero. Over on Staten Island, a second teenager has been charged with hate crimes in the case of a bullied Muslim girl who got her headscarf torn off.

Rob Bell says he’s been “taken to a place of profound brokenness” in recent weeks as his book about hell was denounced as heresy (tho something tells me he’ll be laughing all the way to the bank on this one).

The Library of Congress is compiling and preserving 24 legendary recordings, including a 1953 sermon by Aretha Franklin’s father and that old gospel standard, Tammy Wynett‘s “Stand By Your Man.”

CT’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey talks with presidential wannabe Sen. Rick Santorum, who defends his remarks comparing homosexuality to incest and seems to think Newt Gingrich‘s three marriages are going to be an issue for voters.

In Rhode Island, they’re wrestling with the idea of “reciprocal beneficiaries” instead of gay marriage, and in Illinois, pharmacists who object to the morning-after pill can’t be forced to dispense it, a judge ruled.


In a throwback to the hard-drinking newsrooms of yesteryear, there’s a newspaper editor in Iowa (that’s him, top left) who’s living off beer and water for Lent. Don’t get any ideas, Dan Burke.

Templeton has found yet another obscure British astrophysicist for its annual $1.6 million prize for science and religion. The top Catholic leader in Dublin says in nearly all cases, priests in his archdiocese who have abused minors show little to no remorse.

French politicians held their long-expected forum on Islam yesterday, denying charges they are just trying to attract right-wing voters ahead of next year’s elections.

The Vatican has signed a no-price-gouging agreement with Rome hotels ahead of the May 1 beatification rites for JP2. And when B16 meets with interfaith leaders in Assisi later this year, that’s all they’ll be doing together: meeting, not praying.

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