Where a Roman Catholic deacon ponders the world
From Religion News Service: Perhaps the Elephant & Castle pub here was a fitting locale for a visiting Brit to meet some mates. But other stereotypes were left at the bar as about 100 people trod down a flight of stairs — pints of beer and wine glasses in hand — and into the pub’s [Read More...]
It looks like everybody is getting a jump on the season this year. From the New York Times: If the evangelical organization Answers in Genesis was looking to take its message to a secular audience, it would be hard to do better than the heart of Times Square at noon on Monday. Wedged amid an advertisement urging [Read More...]
From CNS: In a letter to an atheist Italian mathematician, retired Pope Benedict XVI defended his own handling of allegations of the sexual abuse of minors by clergy and politely criticized the logician’s total reliance on scientific facts for meaning. “I never sought to conceal these things,” the pope said of cases of clerical abuse, [Read More...]
From John Allen at NCR: Although the big Vatican story in the English-speaking media today is based on comments by Archbishop Pietro Parolin, the new Secretary of State, on celibacy and democracy, attention in Italy is focused instead on the latest sensation from Pope Francis himself: a personal letter to a renowned journalist and nonbeliever, splashed across the front [Read More...]
The author, an atheist, is discovering what many of us already know: There is serious upheaval in the Vatican, with outsiders brought into major positions of power, and Francis speaking openly of “a current of corruption” in the Curia, but, as an atheist, I don’t really care about any of that. I’m sure it takes [Read More...]
From TIME magazine: Following a lawsuit and more than a year of controversy, at noon on Saturday a group called the American Atheists will unveil the United States’ first public monument to atheism in a square outside the Bradford County courthouse in Starke, Florida, near Jacksonville. The five-foot-long, grey granite bench and connecting pillar, which were built and [Read More...]
Details: Patricia Wojnar left a 32-year career in interior design to pursue a degree that wasn’t in demand: a master’s in bereavement studies. Having seen four family members die early, she wanted to understand how to adapt. As it turned out, the degree perfectly prepared her to enter one of Ireland’s emerging professions. Wojnar is [Read More...]
What’s it like to live and pray in an officially atheist state? CNS has a fascinating interview with Maria Dhimitri, who lived that way in Albania: “They said God didn’t exist. I couldn’t come to church or pray or speak of God at all,” she said of the communist regime that came to power in [Read More...]
The BBC went so we don’t have to. Details: An “atheist church” in North London is proving a big hit with non-believers. Does it feel a bit like a new religion? Not many sermons include the message that we are all going to die and there is no afterlife. But the Sunday Assembly is no [Read More...]
The Catholic League notes: Hanukkah is currently being celebrated, but fortunately for Jews they are not being attacked by David Silverman. No, like other haters in the atheist community, the president of American Atheists saves his vitriol for Christians. Silverman’s latest assault is a huge billboard in New York’s Times Square. The decision by Silverman [Read More...]
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