Tim Townsend is the religion writer for The Post-Dispatch in St. Louis.
(RNS) In a move that could add to the tension between religion and science, the American Psychiatric Association changed a controversial diagnosis regarding how grief relates to mental health, rekindling a debate about whether spirituality or medicine offers the best pathway out of bereavement.
ST. LOUIS (RNS) For nearly two centuries, St. Louis University has been led by the Jesuits. But now, because of a rapidly shrinking pool of eligible leaders, SLU — like many Jesuit schools — could be lead by a lay person.
SHREWSBURY, Mo. (RNS) About 125 Catholics packed a basement conference room — most of them lay people, many of them older. They gathered to learn how to spread the faith, a concept that is both fundamental to Christianity and nearly foreign to modern Roman Catholics.
EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (RNS) City officials say a new $100 “annual registration fee” will help defray the costs of building safety inspections. Pastors, however, say it’s a tax by another name, and possibly unconstitutional.
ST. LOUIS (RNS) The Archdiocese of St. Louis will end its appeal of a court decision that handed over control of a disputed Polish church after a years-long dispute.
ST. LOUIS (RNS) A decision to censure a pastor for participating in a prayer service for victims of the Sandy Hook school massacre has reopened old wounds for the often politically divided Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
There are signs that a younger generation of Catholic leaders have learned lessons from the last decade and are attempting to be as open as possible when a crisis comes to their diocese. Yet in the case of a priest diagnosed with “non-sexual self-bondage,” that desire for transparency may have produced a response that caused more harm than good.
