Lots of chatter today about New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s decision to deliver the closing blessing to the Republican National Convention in Florida next week.
Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Beast says the benediction is a “de facto endorsement of the Romney-Ryan ticket by the Catholic hierarchy.” As troubling, he added, was that Dolan has “all but endorsed Paul Ryan.”
And still more chatter on Rep. Todd Akin’s rape remark. Lisa Miller at WaPo says Akin’s ignorance about the mechanics of reproduction is not surprising given that 80 percent of the nation’s high schools teach about abstinence.
As for Rick Warren cancelling a forum between Obama and Romney? It wasn’t because the campaigns lacked civility, as the megachurch pastor claimed, but that the campaigners themselves lacked the interest.
Speaking of megachurches, Mars Hill Bible Church has appointed a new teaching pastor, months after founding pastor Rob Bell departed for California. He is Kent Dobson, son of Ed Dobson, the one-time leader of the Moral Majority who had a change of heart about evangelicals and politics.
Romney now says one of the reasons he won’t disclose his tax returns is that everyone will know how much money he and his wife, Ann, have donated to the LDS church, which he thinks should be kept private.
A Norwegian court declared Anders Behring Breivik sane and sentenced him to prison. The court rejected the insanity defense for Breivik, who killed 77 people as part of an anti-Muslim crusade.
The ACLU announced it had reached a settlement with a Vermont bed and breakfast, after it refused to host a same-sex wedding reception for two women because of the owners' religious beliefs. Owners of the B&B agreed they violated the state’s public accommodations act, but said they will no longer hold wedding receptions of any kind.
Members of the Muslim community in Illinois are hoping to show Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) they are just as American as he is. The Congressman has said radical Muslims were “trying to kill Americans every week.”
Paul Ryan waded into the Chick-fil-A controversy when he told a reporter that he associates the fast food chain with “free speech.”
The Republican Jewish Coalition called on the Obama campaign to sever its ties to one of the rabbis on a list of 600 who support the president's reelection.
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb was the only rabbi to speak at a controversial 2008 interfaith dialogue dinner in New York hosted for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, where she discussed the Holocaust and expressed support for Palestinian rights.
And finally, Joanna Brooks dismissed WaPo’s Dana Millbank’s suggestion that God has forsaken the Republican Party and is sending in Tropical Storm Isaac to steal the thunder from under the Republican National Convention.
Nah, she says. “No one loves emergency preparedness more than Mormons.”
“Mitt Romney, this tropical storm is in your wheelhouse,” she writes. “You can do this!”
Dear Reader: You can do this too. Don’t let Isaac, or any other storm, threaten delivery of the day’s Religion News Roundup. Sign up for the free email today.
Yonat Shimron
