More indications this week that the Catholic Church is spending an inordinate amount of time on matters related to those of the female persuasion:
– An Arizona Catholic school forfeited the championship baseball match because the opposing (all-boys) team included a female player. The school that backed out, Our Lady of Sorrows, is run by the Society of St. Pius X, the same traditionalist group that B16 has been trying to woo back into the fold.
– The U.S. bishops' Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth is launching an investigation of the Girl Scouts, and no, it's not over whether Thin Mints contain crack to make them so dang addictive.
– Conservatives are trying to block the construction of a “porno palace” strip club next door to a convent of nuns in Illinois. Here's the complaint. (OK, we realize this last one is different, but c'mon, it's Friday).
As the dust settles on POTUS' endorsement of gay marriage, the Golden Rule emerges as the closest thing Americans have to a shared religious law. Franklin Graham, meanwhile, accuses Obama of “shaking his fist” at God on the gay marriage question.
NPR asks how different Christians can read the same Bible and come out on different sides on the gay debate — Americans are split on whether homosexual behavior is sinful: 40 percent say it is, 43 percent say it isn't.
Southern Baptist public policy guru Richard Land apologized — again — for his remarks on Trayvon Martin after a 5-hour meeting with black leaders. If a 5-hour trip to the principal's office isn't enough to make a Baptist believe in purgatory, I don't know what will.
Speaking of purgatory, Mitt Romney is off to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University tomorrow to try and douse lingering evangelical suspicions about his Mormonism and conservative bona fides.
Interesting underground story: turns out Indian women who follow their husbands to the U.S. on special work visas are given H-4 “dependent spouse” visas that don't allow them to work, and they're turning to Hindu and Buddhist spirituality to help them fill the days.
A federal court says New York's law to regulate the marketing and sale of kosher goods is, well, kosher.
A Colorado court, meanwhile, says that the governor's proclamations for the National Day of Prayer violate the state constitution's ban on any preference “by law [given] to any religious denomination or mode of worship.”
In the latest match of religion reporters' favorite parlor game, John Allen revises his list of papabile, or the men who could next be elected pope.
From the Dept. of Phew, new discoveries in Guatemala apparently destroy the notion that the ancient Mayans predicted the demise of the world in 2012.
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