TODAY IN GOD:
RELIGION NEWS BITES FOR YOUR SNACKING PLEASURE
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‘IF IT MAKES YOU HAPPY, IT CAN’T BE THAT BAD:
Archbishop blasts Sheryl Crow appearance

Archbishop Raymond Burke denounced a Catholic charity Wednesday for scheduling a benefit-concert appearance by Sheryl Crow, who supports abortion rights.

Burke submitted his resignation as chairman of the board for the Cardinal Glennon Children’s Foundation, saying the decision to let Crow sing on Saturday left him no other choice.

“It’s very painful for me,” Burke said during a news conference Wednesday. “But I have to answer to God for the responsibility I have as archbishop.

“A Catholic institution featuring a performer who promotes moral evil gives the impression that the church is somehow inconsistent in its teaching,” Burke said.

Crow is set to appear at the 19th annual benefit for the Bob Costas Cancer Center at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center. Costas will host the event, which will also feature comedian Billy Crystal.

Crow’s publicist didn’t return a message seeking comment Wednesday.

Event organizer Allen Allred said he was disappointed with Burke’s decision, but that Crow would appear Saturday as scheduled.

“This is not an event that’s about ideology,” Allred said. “This is about helping kids.”
FOR THE FULL STORY (AP VIA KANSASCITY.COM) CLICK http://www.kansascity.com/414/story/83981.html

Fight over baby’s life support divides ethicists
AUSTIN, Texas — When Emilio Gonzales lies in his mother’s arms, sometimes he’ll make a facial expression that his mother says is a smile.

But the nurse who’s standing right next to her thinks he’s grimacing in pain.

Which one it is — an expression of happiness or of suffering — is a crucial point in an ethical debate that has pitted the mother of a dying child against a children’s hospital, and medical ethicists against each other.

Emilio is 17 months old and has a rare genetic disorder that’s ravaging his central nervous system. He cannot see, speak, or eat. A ventilator breathes for him in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Austin Children’s Hospital, where he’s been since December. Without the ventilator, Emilio would die within hours.

The hospital contends that keeping Emilio alive on a ventilator is painful for the toddler and useless against his illness — Leigh’s disease, a rare degenerative disorder that has no cure.

Under Texas law, Children’s has the right to withdraw life support if medical experts deem it medically inappropriate.

Emilio’s mother, Catarina Gonzales, on the other hand, is fighting to keep her son on the ventilator, allowing him to die “naturally, the way God intended.”
FOR THE FULL STORY (CNN.COM) CLICK HERE

Playwright took a leap of faith in ‘Confessions of a Mormon Boy’
When Steven Fales was a freshman at Boston Conservatory, or “a good heterosexual Mormon chorus boy,” as he now describes his younger self, he faithfully took the Red Line to church in Cambridge every Sunday morning . He even baptized his then-girlfriend into the Church of Latter-Day Saints.

But no matter how many copies of the Book of Mormon he handed out on Newbury Street, Boston still held too many temptations for the repressed Fales. So he did what any good 19-year-old Mormon and former Eagle Scout would do. After freshman year, he jetted off for missionary work in Portugal.

“I remember when I told the head of my department that I needed a leave of absence,” Fales says on the phone from Salt Lake City. “I could just see his eyes well up with tears because he could see the train wreck ahead.”

His Boston Conservatory department head was prophetic . Fales did face a train wreck, but a train wreck that eventually made for good theater. Now he’s back in Boston to star in his one-man show “Confessions of a Mormon Boy,” which recounts how Fales found the “perfect Mormon wife” and sired two children before being excommunicated from the church because he is gay.

“Confessions” could be a Mormon “Running With Scissors.” Fales, now 37, tells how he aspired to be the next Donny Osmond (or Marie) , all while keeping his sexual orientation not-so-well hidden under his love of musical theater. He knew that if he told his family , he would be bounced out of his church and community. So he got married instead.

“The new reparative therapy that emerged in the 1990s was so seductive,” Fales says about the church-based programs that claim to change sexual orientations. “So the show is about how I went through the therapy to change. I had been taught that you can’t go to heaven unless you’re married, so the choice I faced was to be gay and go to hell, or get married and go to heaven.”
FOR THE FULL STORY (BOSTON GLOBE) CLICK HERE

Blast me up, Scotty!
Star Trek actor’s ashes ready for lift-off

LOS ANGELES — The ashes of “Star Trek” star James Doohan will be blasted into space on Saturday when a rocket carrying a symbolic portion of the late actor’s cremated remains is launched in New Mexico.

Doohan, beloved for his role as the USS Enterprise’s chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, died aged 85 in 2005, but plans for his posthumous rendezvous with the stars have been repeatedly delayed.

However, launch organizers Space Services Inc. are confident that Doohan’s wishes will finally be granted when their SpaceLoft XL rocket blasts off from the Spaceport America private launchpad near Las Cruces, in New Mexico.

“While ‘Scotty’ lived this, Jimmy lived for this,” Doohan’s widow Wende said in a press release. “I will be there to see the launch, knowing that Jimmy is participating in an industry which he loved so very much.”
FOR THE FULL STORY (AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE VIA YAHOO NEWS) CLICK HERE

Fusion Muslim Chic Hits Europe’s Streets
PARIS/ROTTERDAM – Clad in skinny jeans, wrap dresses and carefully sculpted headscarves, a generation of young Muslim women is making its mark on Europe’s urban street culture, and influencing mainstream fashion.

The daughters of migrants to Europe from Turkey or the Maghreb, these girls say they are as conscious of style as of Islamic dress codes — and want to fuse contemporary chic with elements of their religious and ethnic background.

“H&M and all the French stores have taken our fashion,” said Mahika, a 24-year-old from Paris. She sees Muslim influences in the current trend of wearing dresses over jeans, and layering sweaters and tops.

Shopping for clothes has become simpler, she said: young Muslim women are now able to dress entirely from mainstream outlets if they choose.

Many of her peers agree, although a Hennes & Mauritz spokeswoman said Muslim fashion has not specifically inspired their collections.

“I find it very easy to dress. You find all kinds of things in town. It is about combinations and it has got easier since you see the influence of our fashion in general fashion,” said 20-year-old Bushra Sayed, a student from Rotterdam.

“I am a Muslim but I am also a person who is interested in fashion and I want to combine all these things,” she adds.

Bushra wears a dark brown scarf wrapped tightly around her head and neck, a dark blue shirt, a figure-hugging grey tweed waistcoat and matching knee-length skirt over jeans.

Bushra’s look is a world away from the black voluminous robes and long scarves worn by more traditional Muslim women, which completely hide the contours of the body.
FOR THE FULL STORY (WASHINGTON POST) CLICK HERE

The Supreme Court’s Catholic Majority
The five justices who turned the Supreme Court around last week and upheld the ban on “partial birth abortion” had much in common.

All are men. All were nominated by conservative Republican presidents. And, it was widely noted, all are Roman Catholics.

Did their religion matter? Should it even be discussed? In the wake of the 5-4 ruling in Gonzales v. Carhart, these questions have been raised and debated in venues from the blog of the American Constitution Society (where Geoffrey R. Stone, a constitutional law professor, said the justices’ religious identity was “too obvious, and too telling, to ignore,”) to ABC’s “The View,” (where Rosie O’Donnell declared, “How about separation of church and state in America?” according to ABC News.)

The pushback from conservative Catholics was immediate – even pre-emptive. Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, declared, “We need more, not fewer, Catholics on the Supreme Court.” On his Web site, the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, an influential conservative, wrote last week, “I expect it is on the minds of many, but so far there has been only marginal public comment on the fact that all five in the Carhart majority are Catholics.” He added, “What can one say? Know-Nothings of the world unite?”

This discussion was probably inevitable: Catholics, for the first time, hold a majority of seats on the Supreme Court, after decades when there were, typically, only one or maybe two “Catholic seats” on the bench. Two of the Catholic justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, were confirmed only in the past two years, in an ideologically charged environment in which all sides were eager for clues on how they might rule on abortion rights and other hot-button issues.

With so much unknown about their legal leanings, their religion became a proxy for both sides — a source of reassurances for conservatives, and of anxiety for liberals. But the nominees’ supporters discouraged any questions about the role of their faith in the confirmation hearings, essentially arguing that it would amount to an unacceptable “religious test” for public office.
FOR THE FULL STORY (Robin Toner in the NYT) CLICK HERE

Prophet arrested for rape threatens police with snake
ZIMBABWE — A self-proclaimed Zimbabwean prophet accused of rape reportedly pulled a piece of magic on police officers by producing a live snake “out of the blue”.

Oscar Chimusoro from Rushinga district stunned officers when a puff udder slithered into Rushinga Police Station on Wednesday last week amid scenes of “pandemonium”, the Herald newspaper reported.

It remained unclear how the snake entered the police station, but the ‘prophet’ is said to have earlier threatened to “exercise his supernatural powers” against the police officers if the charges were not dropped.

“Business came to a standstill”, the paper said, “when police officers rushed into the charge office to catch a glimpse of the snake.”

Police had earlier driven to Chimusoro’s rural home to arrest him on allegations of raping a 17-year-old girl. But Chimusoro, a member of the Johane Masowe sect, refused a ride with the officers on religious grounds and offered to walk for 17km to the police station.

Mashonaland Central police spokesman Assistant Inspector Nicisson Kasoso said Chimusoro arrived at the station just after 7pm on the same day and was taken into the charge office, where he was interrogated.

During the interrogation Chimusoro suddenly went into a trance, Kasoso said.

He added: “He refused to answer questions saying he did not know anything about the rape case and asked the police to quiz his spirit. At the same time, he told the police that he was not keen to spend the night at the station and threatened to invoke his supernatural powers if they defied him.”

As he made his threats, the police spokesman said, the puff adder appeared, which Chimusoro claimed was proof of his ‘powers’.
FOR THE FULL STORY (FROM NEWZIMBABWE.COM) CLICK HERE