WednesdayâÂ?Â?s Religion Roundup: Web woes, transplant ethics, prayer debates

Big stretches of the Internet are going dark today in protest over efforts to stop people from stealing stuff that isn’t theirs. Got it? Somehow the Religion Roundup is still here – even if I have to make it up. Which is pretty much what the Internet is about anyway, no? One of the major […]

Big stretches of the Internet are going dark today in protest over efforts to stop people from stealing stuff that isn’t theirs. Got it?

Somehow the Religion Roundup is still here – even if I have to make it up. Which is pretty much what the Internet is about anyway, no?

One of the major sites protesting antipiracy bills is Wikipedia, which means kids can’t do their homework and the Vatican can’t create cardinals.


But as anyone unfortunate enough to have attended a prom since the advent of camera phones and video uploads knows, and as Rick Santorum fears, nothing on the Internet ever goes away forever.

Amelia Rivera, a three-year-old disabled child with a rare genetic disorder has been denied a kidney transplant and has become a major Internet cause.

Just days after making religious groups happy by upholding the so-called “ministerial exception” on hiring and firing, the Supreme Court left religious conservative frowning when it upheld a ruling against sectarian prayers at the opening of meetings of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners in North Carolina.

In Delaware, they’re starting the same sort of case by asking whether the “Lord’s Prayer” is actually a Christian prayer.

Maybe Jesus got it off Wikipedia?

Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal, who doesn’t care for President or Mrs. Obama too much, said he will pray for them using Psalm 109, a rather vivid bit of imprecatory prayer that famously asks God to let an evil ruler’s “days be few” and “his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”

O’Neal, who recently got into some trouble for writing a text referring to First Lady Michelle Obama as “Mrs. YoMama” (and the Grinch), responded to the new kerfuffle by telling folks to lighten up. He said people were misinterpreting his words and he wouldn’t resign.


New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan‘s doctor wants him to lighten up, by at least 25 more pounds, some of it before he is made a cardinal next month — when Wikipedia is back online. (They say red is not as slimming as black.)

Dolan is on board with the plan. He is also on board a jet headed to Israel for nine days before he flies to Rome to get his red biretta.

Dolan can rest easy about one thing: Israel’s defense minister says a decision about bombing Iran’s nuclear program is “very far off.”

A bad economy can be a boon to marriages – as long as you blame the economy for your marital troubles and not your spouse.

Muslims like Ron Paul, if they have to back a Republican. And evangelical leaders like Rick Santorum. Neither endorsement seems to be moving the needle, however, so they have that in common.

Evangelical leaders say last weekend’s conclave that backed Santorum was not “rigged,” as some claimed.


National Catholic Reporter looks at Catholicism’s post-industrial Rust Belt in the Northeast and Midwest, where parishes are closes faster than factories.

— David Gibson

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