A temple of the Russian Orthodox Church in the city of Petrozavodsk conducts divine services with the use of computer technologies. One can watch priests on monitors and read prayers in the Russian language. The local eparchy intends to use the know-how for missionary purposes. The clergy plans to attract young people to the church, as well as those people, who find it difficult to attend divine services – prisoners and disabled people. It was a young priest of the... Read more

Especially for the “Jesus-in-the-Tortilla” crowd comes news of … “Mary-in-the-Grilled-Cheese.” If you’ve not already gone to the above link, suffice it to say that 10 years ago a woman fixed a grilled cheese sandwich and, upon taking a bite, found what she determined to be the face of the Virgin Mary staring back at her from the toasted bread. She’s now selling it — the 1/2 sandwich with picture and missing bite — on eBay. I’m not sure if you... Read more

1. Dear God, please put another holiday between Christmas and Easter. There is nothing good in there now. Amanda 2. Dear God, Thank you for the baby brother but what I asked for was a puppy. I never asked for anything before. You can look it up. Joyce 3. Dear Mr. God, I wish you would not make it so easy for people to come apart. I had to have 3 stitches and a shot. Janet 4. God, I read... Read more

I have just finished reading Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. I commend it to all who, like me, are tardy in coming to this classic. Of the End Notes, 129 in my edition, the majority are Scriptural references. The dialogues between Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester are a treasure — almost as good as Scarlet & Rhett in that other classic. I’d been wanting to read Jane Eyre for some time when I found it for under $6, Barnes & Noble... Read more

How’s that for understatement of the day? Read more

Father of Parma priest to be canonized; Communists killed Serbian pastor It had all the makings of a classic Balkans tragedy. A father survives the Nazis, but is executed for his faith by the Communists. The son, surviving on a young boy’s memories of a loving parent, must deny the father publicly lest the same authorities put him to death. After immigrating to America, the Rev. Vasilije Sokolovic continued to be haunted by all that he did not know of... Read more

WASHINGTON – Communion has been the subject of some recent high-profile debates, ranging from calls to deny the sacrament to then Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry to a decision to revoke the first Communion of an 8-year-old girl Roman Catholic girl because she ingested a non-wheat wafer. The reality is that the meaning of Communion and the way it is practiced have been sources of dispute since the early centuries of Christianity. Those debates continue but rarely reach the national... Read more

The following is from Dr Maria Khoury: Dearly Beloved in Christ our Savior, I send you many greetings from our small village of Taybeh in the middle of Biblical Judea where we as Christian people are still trying to survive and exist and in non violent ways resisting the agenda and the Israeli Occupation to create a hundred percent Jewish homeland in historic Palestine by choking us up with hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements. In the last five years nothing... Read more

Here’s a story about Planned Parenthood teaching MANDATORY sex ed classes in a Florida school system. (The article actually uses the word “dicey” — which, when you think about it, strikes a morbid pun within a PP context.) Read more

We seem to have lost sight of the fact that we are supposed to have a separation between church and state in this country. There are large numbers of people in the U.S. who just voted for President Bush as a result of his perceived Christian values. The only problem is that our forefathers had the foresight to see that this was a country founded on diversity and that religion had no place in government. Therefore, those who voted for... Read more