Monday's Religion News Roundup: Buddha's birthday; Biden on gay marriage; RIP MCA

Buddhists around the world are celebrating the Awakened One's birthday. What do you get a guy who says the root of all evil is desire? Anyway, HuffPo has a nice slideshow of Buddha b'day celebrations.  

VP Joe Biden said yesterday that he is “absolutely comfortable” with gay marriage, going further than his partner on the Democratic ticket – President Obama.

Former president Bill Clinton is lobbying against N.C.'s proposed gay marriage ban, Billy Graham endorsed it, and black pastors find themselves in the middle of a tough religio-political divide as Tuesday's vote approaches.

An attorney for one of the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks is wearing a hijab at her client's request. 

Conservative American churchmen living in Rome — including disgraced former Boston Cardinal Bernard Law — were apparently key players in pushing the hostile takeover of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput announced that five priests accused of sexually abusing children last year would be barred from ministry and could be defrocked, while three others were cleared by a church-led investigation.

The Vatican's newspaper says proponents of euthanasia and aborting ill fetuses use the same arguments that were once used by the Nazis to promote their eugenics program of mass extermination.

Nearly 500 years after 147 Swiss Guards died protecting Pope Clement VII during the Sack of Rome, 26 Swiss men joined the colorfully clad army. Maybe they can head the search for those missing Vatican II documents.

The White House has amended its Jewish American presidential proclamation, taking out the part that honors Gertrude Stein, who was not Jewish.   

How did the Mormons grow so fast in the last decade? They changed how they counted, Peggy Fletcher Stack reports. 

A Missouri state court awarded more than $5 million in damages to a woman who said he was harassed at her AT&T job after converting to Islam. 

HuffPo has a nice aggregation of the late Beastie Boy Adam Yauch's interviews on Buddhism. You'll be missed, MCA.

A Catholic priest says that single Australian women should not be “too choosy” in the midst of a reported “Aussie man drought.” Sounds like they should call The Weather Girls. 

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Yr hmbl aggregator,

Daniel Burke

(Image courtesy of Wikipedia.)