Wednesday’s Religion News Roundup

Nearly 500 worshipers gathered at St. Odilia Catholic Church in Tucson on Tuesday night to honor the victims of Saturday’s shooting rampage and pray for an end to senseless violence. “God wills that we resist evil,” said Tucson’s Roman Catholic Bishop Gerald Kicanas, who led the service. “That we live with integrity. That we speak […]

Nearly 500 worshipers gathered at St. Odilia Catholic Church in Tucson on Tuesday night to honor the victims of Saturday’s shooting rampage and pray for an end to senseless violence.

“God wills that we resist evil,” said Tucson’s Roman Catholic Bishop Gerald Kicanas, who led the service. “That we live with integrity. That we speak and act with civility and respect.”

Kicanas told CNS in a separate interview that politicians should reconsider the gun laws that allowed accused shooter Jared Lee Loughner to buy a semi-automatic glock, despite his apparently scrambled mental state.


President Obama will assume the role of consoler-in-chief at a memorial service tonight to be held at the University of Arizona. If past is prologue, look for St. Paul to make an appearance. The House is honoring victims of the shootings, including one of its own, in a public floor session, and then a private service on Capitol Hill. House chaplain Rev. Daniel Coughlin, Senate Chaplain Barry Black, and Rabbi David Saperstein of the Reform Action Center of Reform Judaism will lead the service.

Arizona lawmakers quickly passed a bill yesterday that bans protests within 300 feet of a funeral one hour before or after the ceremony, after Westboro Baptist Church announced plans to picket the funeral of a 9-year-old girl with signs reading “God Hates Fags.”

Sarah Palin responded to critics – particularly in the media – who assigned some blame for the Arizona massacre to her inflammatory rhetoric. Such accusations, Palin said, amount to “blood libel,” a curious turn of phrase to use after a shooting in which a Jewish congresswoman was targeted.

As the NYT says, “Palin was inventing a new definition for an emotionally laden phrase. Blood libel is typically used to describe the false accusation that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals, in particular the baking of matzos for passover. The term has been used for centuries as the pretext for anti-Semitism and violent pogroms against Jews.” Franklin Graham rushed to Palin’s defense, saying he’s “shocked” that fingers are pointing at Sister Sarah.

A leading evangelical said he is folding a project that aimed to foster political civility due to a lack of interest.

Religious persecution is not only more prevalent among Muslim-majority countries, but it also generally occurs at more severe levels, say authors of a new study on religious freedom.


A gunman in Egypt killed a 71-year-old Christian man and wounded five other in another attack on an already traumatized community. Egypt recalled its ambassador to the Vatican after Pope Benedict XVI demanded that certain countries, including Egypt, do more to protect their Christian minorities. Iran has arrested about 70 Christians since Christmas in a crackdown that demonstrates the emptiness of Islamic leaders’ boasts that they provide room for other faiths, the AP reports. An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan sentenced an imam and his son to life imprisonment for tearing down and trampling a poster containing Quaranic verses, according to AFP.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who plans to hold hearings on the “radicalization of American Muslims,” told a conservative radio host that usually “when a war begins, we’re all Americans. But in this case, this is not the situation.”

An Ohio science teacher accused of burning the image of a cross on students’ arms told the AP that he’s disappointed school officials voted to fire him. The Archdiocese of New York says it will close 27 schools at the end of the current academic year.

Religious Americans have donated $300 million dollars and thousands of volunteers to earthquake-shattered Haiti, according to USA Today.

The Audubon Society says the rash of mysterious bird deaths is not a sign of the apocalypse (or aflockalypse, if you will), nor of God’s displeasure with the repeal of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, but merely nature marching its normal deadly course.

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