TuesdayâÂ?Â?s Religion News Roundup: Mitt’s grits? Atheist overreach? Obama and Bishops? Amish in drag?

March Madness is here. In Republican bracketology, this means whoever wins the South region by surpassing expectations in today’s Mississippi and Alabama primaries could win it all. If a Massachusetts Mormon does well, it could be over. If a Pennsylvania Catholic does well, it may never end. And if Newt Gingrich can’t win in his […]

March Madness is here. In Republican bracketology, this means whoever wins the South region by surpassing expectations in today’s Mississippi and Alabama primaries could win it all.

If a Massachusetts Mormon does well, it could be over. If a Pennsylvania Catholic does well, it may never end. And if Newt Gingrich can’t win in his own backyard…well, who knows what he’ll do.

Some items from The Dept. of Overreach:


The case for “after-birth” abortion gets the William Saletan treatment. The authors of that controversial article must be crypto pro-lifers.

Rush-bashers go so far out on a Limbaugh they may provoke sympathy for the shock jock. Republican women at least appear to be rallying around the party in the wake of the contraception kerfuffle.

And President Obama, who seems to be banking on winning alienated women voters, may want to read a new poll showing the birth control mandate is not a favorite of voters overall.

Perhaps that will get both the White House and the Catholic bishops back to the negotiating table, where they both say they want to be.

Forty or so leading bishops start a two-day confab in Washington today to sort out some of these issues, and NCR’s Michael Sean Winters has some advice for them: Talk, don’t shout.

Mark Judge isn’t listening. The contraception mandate shows that liberals are Nazis. Or maybe Stalinists. It’s a gray area.

Meanwhile, American Atheists are putting up billboards in Jewish and Muslim neighborhoods, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation is proselytizing: their NYT ad calls on liberal Catholics to leave the church, and to stop “enabling” all the Bad Things That Have Ever Happened Anywhere.


The church’s lawyers may be doing the FFRF’s job for them: Laurie Goodstein reports on a Catholic legal crusade against the organization that has helped thousands of people who were abuse by clergy as children. Interesting PR strategy.

The Anonymous hackers just can’t quit on the Vatican. This time they are targeting Vatican Radio. (That is your scribe’s alma mater, so I take it personally. But don’t hold it against me, hackers. Please.)

It’s Timothy Cardinal Dolan Week in New York State!

Black churches want to register one million voters on Easter. What about the bunny and candy?

News Lead of the Day: “Four Amish youths were charged with underage drinking after they crashed their horse-drawn buggy into a police cruiser in upstate New York…”

— David Gibson

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