Big news today from the City of Brotherly Love, where Cardinal Justin Rigali, under fire for allegedly allowing priests accused of abusing children to remain in ministry, is resigning, the Vatican announced.
Rigali will be replaced by Archbishop Charles Chaput, formerly of Denver, who knows his way around the public square.
NCR has a loooong interview with Chaput, in which the 66-year-old says he hopes he has the strength and energy to deal with Philly’s many challenges and calls gay marriage “the issue of our time.”
Episcopalians in New York would surely agree, as they face a tic-tac-toe situation in which local bishops allow gays and lesbians in Brooklyn and Queens to get married, but not in Staten Island, Manhattan or the Bronx.
A Fox News host said that Mitt Romney is “not a Christian,” the second time recently that the network has questioned/ridiculed the candidate’s Mormon faith.
The head the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, Michele Bachmann’s former church, pushed back against claims that WELS is anti-Catholic. An unnamed Bachmann campaign aide says the Minnesota congresswoman left WELS over “preference issues,” but doesn’t say what those preferences were.
President Obama’s re-election campaign is moving quickly to address Jewish concerns over Israel, according to The Forward.
Libyan Islamists are watching their country’s civil war from London, the NYT reports.
Malaysia and the Vatican agreed to establish diplomatic ties, a move seen as a bid to appease minority Christians, but a Malaysian court says the country’s constitution does not protect the right to renounce Islam.
A Muslim shot by a Dallas man in the aftermath 9/11 says his Muslim faith requires him to forgive his attacker, who is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday.
A Florida federal district says that a Dixie County courthouse must remove a large Ten Commandments monument.
Judge Ray (I Break for the Decalogue) Moore’s son was arrested for breaking the ninth, and presumably the fifth, commandments.
A New Jersey rabbi and his wife are accused of abducting an Israeli man and threatening to bury him alive if he didn’t give his wife a religious divorce.
A new study says reading the Bible correlates to greater concern about poverty, conservation and civil liberties.
Hindu Vegetarians can make a New Jersey restaurant that mistakenly served them meat pay for their trip to India to purify their meat-infested souls, a state court ruled. The president of a local Indo-American group disagreed with the ruling. “God is not going to punish you for doing something unknowingly,” he said.
A South Carolina couple claims that Jesus appeared in their Wal-Mart receipt. I guess sometimes you save the receipt, sometimes the receipt saves you.
Yr hmbl aggregator,
Daniel Burke