Tuesday’s Religion News Roundup

The House announced plans for a bipartisan congressional prayer service on Wednesday for victims of Saturday’s shooting in Arizona and President Obama will participate a memorial service in Tucson Wednesday night. A Mass for all the victims of St. Odilia Parish, including a 9-year-old girl who received First Communion last year, will be held tonight. […]

The House announced plans for a bipartisan congressional prayer service on Wednesday for victims of Saturday’s shooting in Arizona and President Obama will participate a memorial service in Tucson Wednesday night. A Mass for all the victims of St. Odilia Parish, including a 9-year-old girl who received First Communion last year, will be held tonight.

Meanwhile, suspected shooter Jared Lee Loughner (that’s him at left) made his first appearance in court on Monday, speaking only a brief reply when asked if he understood he could get life in prison, or the death penalty, if he’s convicted of killing federal judge John Roll.

The media continue to try to parse Loughner’s motivations. Religion seems to be playing a small, and as yet, little understood role. In perhaps the wildest guess, the New York Daily News claims to have uncovered an “occult shrine” in Loughner’s backyard. One of the videos Loughner posted online included the claim that he could control religion “by being the mind controller.” A friend told the AP, however, that Loughner was more into marijuana than religion. “He wasn’t really too keen on religion it seemed like,” the friend said. “I don’t know if floating through life is the right term or whatever, but he was really just into doing his own thing.”


Shifting gears, Pope Benedict XVI called sex and civic education in schools in Europe is an “attack” on religious freedom, according to AFP. Benedict also urged Catholics to give their children Christian names.

Religious leaders in Washington, including Cardinal Donald Wuerl, are praying and pushing Cuba to release a U.S. contractor who has been imprisoned for 13 months. Tension is building between Rhode Island’s new governor Lincoln Chaffee and the state’s leading Catholic prelate Bishop Thomas Tobin, who seems to enjoy jousting with politicians.

A judge has sentenced two men to life in prison after they pleaded guilty in a series of fires at churches in East Texas last year. A Canadian court decided it is unconstitutional to accommodate the religious beliefs of government marriage commissioners by exempting those who object from solemnizing same-sex marriages.

A controversial American lawyer who has spent more than 20 years suing pedophile priests and the Catholic Church is joining a new legal practice dedicated to clergy sexual abuse in England. Israel is inviting tourists to retrace the footsteps of the Virgin Mary – part of a growing campaign to bring Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land, according to the AP.

Someone stole 40,000 pennies that children at a Maryland church were collecting to donate to charity. According to the Air Force, no training program is more popular among prospective chaplains than the late Rev. Jerry Fallwell’s Liberty Theological Seminary.

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