Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts declined to grant a stay, and gay couples are lining up to apply for marriage licenses, as gay marriage became legal in the District today. Archbishop of Washington Donald Wuerl defended the decision by Catholic Charities to change its health coverage to avoid offering benefits to same-sex spouses, saying the church teaches to pay a just wage, but employers have the right to “frame” compensation packages. A United Methodist church in Washington announced that it will celebrate same-sex weddings, despite a UMC prohibition against it.
Bishops from three historically black Methodist denominations and other African American leaders are in South Carolina for the three-day “Great Gathering,” aimed at finding solutions for persistent problems that plague black men. President Obama will address the gathering via video today. The AP says that four months after Martin Luther King’s daughter was elected President of the now-troubled civil rights group he co-founded, she still hasn’t taken the helm or talked publicly about it.
Kaiser Health News takes a look at the practical applications of the U.S. bishops’ new directives for patients in “chronic and presumably irreversibly positions,” such as persistent vegetative states. There are almost 10,000 faith-based charities in Haiti, and, in spite of their best intentions, they are making things worse for Haitians, says the Rev. Tony Campolo.
It took a Baltimore jury less than three hours to return a guilty verdict against three members of a Baltimore religious sect in the starving death of a 1-year-old boy. A high-school shop teacher in Iowa was put on paid leave after prohibiting a student from making a Wiccan altar.
Britain’s House of Lords voted to allow same-sex partnerships to use religious language and be celebrated in religious buildings. Dutch gay rights groups called off a protest at a Catholic church after it said it would no longer ban gays from Communion. The pope will visit Spain in November. The European Court of Human Rights will review the decision that crucifixes in Italian public schools violate the European Convention on Human Rights.
A leading Pakistani cleric issued a 600-page fatwa in London rebutting every conceivable justification for religious violence and calling terrorists “disbelievers.” Reuters has an interesting reporter’s notebook piece on the fatwa here.
An Irish bishop is asking his flock to pay for the diocese’s $14.2-million sex-abuse settlement. The Catholic Church in France doesn’t like a new pay telephone line set up to hear confessions. Mullahs in Afghanistan are preaching birth control.
