USA Today Richard W. Garnett 4/16/2006
Religious leaders have long tried to sway their congregants to take sides in political battles. That might offend some, but believers, not the state, should decide when faithful activism crosses the line, says a Notre Dame law professor.
Does politics have a place in the pulpit? Should places of worship be homes for engaged and unsettling activism — or tranquil havens, sealed off from the rough-and-tumble of today’s bitter partisan debates?
Wall Street Opinion Journal Richard Lindzen April 12, 2006
Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.
There have been repeated claims that this past year’s hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?
Wall Street Opinion Journal Matthew Kaminski April 11, 2006
Practicing a tolerant strain of Islam, the Ottomans clashed with fundamentalists.
The Ottoman Empire passed into history in 1922, a mere lifetime ago. Yet in a certain way it feels as distant as ancient Athens or Rome, known to us mostly through architectural relics, a few striking events and a mythical aura. Kemal Atatürk’s secular Turkish republic, the empire’s successor state, consciously rejected much of the Ottoman heritage and most of its traditions, while the empire’s colonial outposts have reverted to the imperatives of their local identities.
MOSCOW. April 4 (Interfax) – The Russian Orthodox Church should develop a universal approach to human rights based on moral norms andcombining various traditions, said Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad Kirill.
Townhall.com Randy Hall April 7, 2006
Legislation approved Wednesday by the California Senate Judiciary Committee is “a sexual-agenda bomb dressed up as a child-caring Easter egg,” a conservative group charged.
SB 1437, which would amend the state’s education code by adding the words “gender” and “sexual orientation” to its anti-discrimination policy, would force school districts to “teach school children as young as kindergarten to accept and embrace transsexuality, bisexuality and homosexuality in all its forms,” according to Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families (CCF).
. . . more
JBL: It’s always interesting that controversial Christian historical topics are released at Easter (or Christmas).
San Francisco Chronicle John Noble Wilford, Laurie Goodstein April 7, 2006
An early Christian manuscript, including the only known text of the Gospel of Judas, has surfaced after 1,700 years, and it portrays Judas Iscariot not as a betrayer of Jesus but as his favored disciple and willing collaborator.
In this text, scholars reported Thursday, the account of events leading to the Crucifixion differs sharply from the four Gospels in the New Testament.
Here Jesus was said to entrust Judas with special knowledge and ask him to betray him to the Roman authorities. By doing so, he tells Judas, “you will exceed” the other disciples.
NCC PRESIDENT URGES COMMUNICATORS, TAKE ON ‘FALSE RELIGION’
New York, March 30, 2006–The president of the National Council of
Churches, the Rev. Michael Livingston, strongly urged church
communicators to, “Tell our story. By any means necessary.”
“Mainline Protestant and Orthodox churches have been pounded
into irrelevancy by the media machine of a false religion,” Livingston
said. He described what passes as religion to be, “a political
philosophy masquerading as gospel; an economic principle wrapped in
religious rhetoric and painted red, white and blue.”
NEW YORK, March 25 /Christian Newswire/ — Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, and an eyewitness to Terri Schiavo’s final hours, released the following open letter to Michael Schiavo tonight. Fr. Pavone will read it to a worldwide audience on an internationally broadcast religious service on Sunday morning, March 26.
Audrey Ignatoff
I have written about the devil before, but always in a metaphorical way. However, I now feel that an evil force has come too close to home. Even this embattled “health care warrior” was shocked to the core to learn that school children in my district were being taken on a trip to see an exhibit called “Body Worlds” at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. This goes against all religious and ethical beliefs in the civilized world, and has given me nightmares from just looking at the website.
Poland.pl 2006-03-09, 17:26
The Catholic Church in Poland has apologized for the harm caused by those priests who collaborated with the communist secret police.