Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George – never a man afraid to say exactly what he’s thinking – says “gay liberation” forces are now as big a threat to the Catholic Church as the KKK once was.

And the other guy who isn’t afraid to say what’s on his mind – Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow – is one of the top religion authors of 2011.

A court-brokered settlement will allow 12 nurses at a New Jersey teaching hospital to avoid participating in abortions for religious or moral reasons.

Two verdicts in cases we’ve been following: A former church janitor was convicted in New Jersey of stabbing a Catholic priest to death; and a white man who torched a black church on the night of President Obama’s election was sentenced to 14 years in Massachusetts.

Catholics aren’t the only ones who oppose new rules that require insurance coverage for contraception: so do evangelicals.

Southern Baptist gadfly Wiley Drake and his birther friends lost a court bid to make POTUS prove he is a naturally born citizen.

The Vatican won’t be able to claim squatter’s rights to keep porn off of the Vatican.xxx domain name, but then again neither can anyone else. And that European economic meltdown? The result of a lack of faith, B16 says.

A court in British Columbia has convicted a father of aggravated assault after he performed a botched circumcision on his 4-year-old son because, apparently, God told him to.

German Jews, thriving in ways that would have been unimaginable at the end of World War II, are nonetheless fighting a tide of assimilation among youth that threatens to sap their vitality.

There will be no Christmas Eve Midnight Mass in Iraq because of security concerns.

And with that, dear readers, we’re off for the next week so we can all catch our breath during the holidays. We’ll be back up in running the first week of 2012. Until then, have a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and a wonderful new year!

— Kevin Eckstrom