TuesdayâÂ?Â?s Religion News Roundup

Today is All Saints Day, one of the oldest feasts days on the Christian calendar and a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics. The Catholic bishops of Wisconsin would prefer you not bring your concealed weapon to Mass, though a new state law that goes into effect today allows everyone to hide their heater wherever […]

Today is All Saints Day, one of the oldest feasts days on the Christian calendar and a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics.

The Catholic bishops of Wisconsin would prefer you not bring your concealed weapon to Mass, though a new state law that goes into effect today allows everyone to hide their heater wherever they go.

Loudon County (Virginia) Republicans used a picture of President Obama as a zombie with a bullet hole in his head to enlist volunteers for a family-friendly Halloween event. They insisted it was all in good fun, but Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, was not amused. “Shameful and offensive,” he said.


The tension between the White House and the Catholic bishops is unconcealed, as The Washington Post reports on a number of snubs and snafus that have soured a relationship that was never a match made in heaven.

Pope Benedict XVI‘s point man on relations with Judaism made his big U.S. debut with a talk at Seton Hall in which he said…Jews really want Pius XII to be a saint and Jews can look upon the cross as “the definitive Yom Kippur.”

No, really, he said that. The Forward said the remarks from Cardinal Kurt Koch were “met with either blank expressions or grumbling from the audience of about 60 rabbis, priests, theologians and specialists in interfaith dialogue.”

Richard Goldstone, the eminent South African jurist, says calling Israel an “apartheid” state is “an unfair and inaccurate slander.”

Homeless people (the other 1 percent) are joining the Occupy Wall Street protests at various venues. “I find myself getting sleep. Interesting conversation,” Robert Gaffney tells The New York Times. “But I haven’t figured out how to do laundry.”

In London, Anglican Church leaders haven’t figured out what they think of the OWS protesters camping out (and other things) in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and that is leading to rifts and resignations and much confusion.


Max Weber, still right: a European Central Bank study says Catholics are more likely to support government intervention in the economy than Protestants and also have a stronger preference for sharing wealth equally.

And what’s wrong with wealth inequality, ask some Protestants?

Speaking of wealth, Rupert Murdoch now controls 50 percent of the Bible-publishing industry after HarperCollins bought Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Doomsday prophet Harold Camping says he is embarrassed that the world didn’t end on October 21, as he predicted it would. I know, I hate when that happens.

A Baptist university in California doesn’t like it when transgender students enroll, so they booted Domaine Javier, who was born male, for “committing or attempting to engage in fraud or concealing identity” by checking “female” on her online application form.

On a more irenic note, two final items, on Christian art, writ large and small:

On this day in 1512, Michelangelo finished painting the Sistine Chapel. (This day in 1513, he finished cleaning his brushes.)


Last month in Israel, archeologists unveiled a tiny box carved of bone some 1,600 years ago and discovered during excavations in Jerusalem two years ago. When the cross-inscribed lid is removed, the remains of two portraits are still visible in paint and gold leaf. The figures are probably saints, and may be Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

— David Gibson

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