Wednesday’s Religion News Roundup: B16 2.0 * St. Sainsbury * ADL at 100

AshelyMadison.com has a new poster boy (literally) for infidelity. A Catholic priest fired for advocating open marriage likens himself to centuries of martyrs burned at the stake. And Britons put more faith in their grocers than they do in the church.

photo courtesy of Sainsbury's.

Conservative activists aren’t happy with the FDA’s morning-after pill decision yesterday. We’ll let the Atlantic do the explaining.

photo courtesy of Sainsbury's.

photo courtesy of Sainsbury’s.

And the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh isn’t happy with a female Carnegie Mellon student who dressed as the pope from the waist up. Over to you, HuffPo, to explain the student’s artful shaving of her privates.


From the Dept. of Old Popes Never Really Go Away, our old pal B16 is scheduled to return to the Vatican tomorrow to live out his retirement in a retrofitted convent.

A happy 100th birthday to the good folks over at the Anti-Defamation League. Mazel tov!

The Jews are on the move again — this time to laid-back Portland, Ore., according to The Forward, where organizing a bunch of folks in search of taking it easy is proving a challenge.

AshleyMadison.com, the online haven for cheaters, has a new poster boy (literally) for infidelity: South Carolina’s Mark Sanford, he of hiking-along-the-Appalachian Trail fame.

CBN’s David Brody doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about after NBA player Jason Collins came out as gay. Cuz ya know, it’s hip to be gay. Maybe this series of tweets by former New York Knicks Larry Johnson will show Brody what Collins was up against.

New Jersey Catholics want answers as to why a priest who admitted abuse has been allowed to work with children again, despite a court-ordered settlement that imposed a lifetime ban on access to kids.

The Supreme Court declined to hear Alabama’s challenge to a court ruling that tossed out much of the state’s get-tough immigration law, and the three Catholic, Methodist and Episcopal bishops who fought the law feel vindicated.


It’s time to order new business cards for our own Jana Riess, who says “garden-variety heretic” is perhaps a better job title. Jonathan Merritt, meanwhile, wonders what to do with legions of religious parents who home-school their kids.

American Muslims are surprisingly supportive of the idea that other faiths can find eternal life in heaven, according to a new poll.

Wedding bells — er, civil union bells — are ringing across Colorado for gay and lesbian couples.

Keith and Kristyn Getty like having their modern hymns being sung in churches, but they’re equally happy to have them land one day in dusty old hymnals.

Some 15 countries were cited by a watchdog panel for violating religious freedom, along with a host of trans-national terror groups who are not easily classified as a nation states.

Possibly among the list: the guys who kidnapped two Orthodox bishops in war-torn Syria and still haven’t released them.


A Catholic priest in Brazil who defied the church by supporting homosexuality and open marriage has lost his job. “I feel honored to belong to the long list of people,” the formerly Rev. Roberto Francisco Daniel said, “who have been murdered and burned alive for thinking and searching for knowledge.”

Ouch. Britons put as much faith in the church as they do in Google — and they don’t mean that as a compliment. And they likely put more trust in the shelves of Sainsbury’s than the churches they rarely visit.

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