Yeah, we know we\u2019re a little behind in the posting this week. Sorry. It\u2019s just that now that we\u2019re semi-retred-ish-esque, things tend to get away from us. And plus, our shuffleboard team is going to the league finals and training\u2019s been pretty hard-core. <\/span><\/p>\n Forgive us our bloggy deliquency. Here ya go \u2026<\/p>\n Mystery nun ID\u2019d in Pope John Paul II sainthood case<\/span><\/font> The identity of the nun has been one of the Catholic Church\u2019s most closely guarded secrets. The nun says that she was cured of Parkinson\u2019s after she and her community of nuns prayed to John Paul.<\/p>\n The nun, a member of the \u201cCongregation of Little Sisters of Catholic Motherhood\u201d in Aix-en-Provence in southeast France, works at the Sainte-Felicite hospital in Paris, said the official, who declined to be identified because an official announcement is expected Sunday.<\/p>\n The bishop in the woman\u2019s diocese will announce details about her case during his Palm Sunday Mass this weekend, said Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the Polish cleric spearheading the pontiff\u2019s beatification cause.<\/p>\n French newspaper Le Figaro, in an unsourced report late Wednesday on its Web site, first identified the nun, saying she was 45.<\/p>\n The nun is traveling to Rome for ceremonies Monday marking the second anniversary of the pontiff\u2019s death and the closure of a church investigation into his life which began after chants of \u201cSanto Subito!\u201d or \u201cSainthood Now!\u201d erupted during John Paul\u2019s 2005 funeral. $27 million \u2018anti-evolution\u2019 museum to open soon in Ketucky<\/font> There were dinosaurs of every kind aboard Noah\u2019s ark. Some dinosaurs managed to hang around until just a few hundred years ago. The legend of St. George slaying the dragon? That probably was a dinosaur.<\/p>\n Exhibits showing all this and more will be at the Creation Museum, a $27 million religious showcase nearing completion in Northern Kentucky.<\/p>\n The museum, in Boone County near the Cincinnati\/Northern Kentucky International Airport, is being built by a non-profit group called Answers in Genesis<\/a>. It is scheduled to open on Memorial Day. Museum and Northern Kentucky tourism officials are expecting it to be a boon to the region, bringing in at least 250,000 visitors in its first year. Young Sikhs abandon turban in favour of Bollywood haircuts<\/font> Young Sikhs are abandoning the traditional headwear, wearying of the elaborate ceremony of maintaining long hair and knotting it under six yards of starched cotton.<\/p>\n \u201cAcross Punjab a large number of Sikh youth have cut their hair and, sadly, the turban-tying ceremony for teenage boys has also become rare, even in villages\u201d lamented Avtar Singh Makkar, a senior clergyman.<\/p>\n The majority of the world\u2019s 20 million Sikhs are concentrated in rural Punjab, where barbers \u2013 who historically had to supplement their incomes due to a lack of customers \u2013 are now doing brisk business.<\/p>\n Cutting the hair renders a Sikh apostate, or \u201cpati\u201d, but many boys are now copying the hairstyles of Bollywood stars. No hash matzos?<\/font> The Green Leaf Party announced on Wednesday that products of the cannibis plant have been grouped by rabbis within a family of foods such as peas, beans and lentils that is off-limits to Jews of European descent during Passover.<\/p>\n The Green Leaf Party, which has made several unsuccessful attempts to win election to parliament on a platform urging marijuana\u2019s legalisation, said it was issuing its advisory as a service to Jews who don\u2019t want to break ritual law.<\/p>\n But it said the rabbinical ban for the holiday beginning at sunset on Monday, during which many Jews eat matzos, or unleavened bread, could be a blessing in disguise.<\/p>\n \u201cLogic dictates that if the rabbis say cannabis is non-kosher for Passover, it is apparently kosher during the rest of the year,\u201d Michelle Levin, a spokeswoman for the party, told the YNet news web site. \u2018Da Vinci Code\u2019 author wins U.K. copyright case<\/font> Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh had sued Brown\u2019s publisher, Random House Inc., claiming he had copied from their 1982 nonfiction book, \u201cThe Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.\u201d<\/p>\n Both books deal with the theory that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a child, and that the bloodline continues.<\/p>\n One of the judges said copyright protects an author\u2019s labor in researching and writing a book, but doesn\u2019t extend to facts, theories and themes.<\/p>\n Brown wasn\u2019t a defendant. He testified last year that he studied the plaintiffs\u2019 book when writing his best-seller but didn\u2019t copy from it.<\/p>\n The \u201ccase should never have come to court in the first place\u201d and was a waste of \u201ctime and money,\u201d Random House Group Chief Executive Gail Rebuck said Wednesday in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cMisguided claims like the one that we have faced, and the appeal, are not good for authors, and not good for publishers,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we are glad that the Court of Appeal has upheld the original judgment and that, once again, common sense and justice have prevailed, helping to ensure the future of creative writing in the UK.\u201d<\/p>\n The authors now face legal bills of about $6 million. For Some Black Pastors, Accepting Gay Members Means Losing Others<\/font> At the same time, Tabernacle Baptist, an African-American congregation, lost many of its most loyal, generous parishioners, who could not accept a message that contradicted what they saw as the Bible\u2019s condemnation of same-sex relations. Over the last three years, Tabernacle\u2019s Sunday attendance shrank to 800, from 1,100.<\/p>\n The debate about homosexuality that has roiled predominantly white mainline churches for years has gradually seeped into African-American congregations, threatening their unity, finances and, in some cases, their existence.<\/p>\n In St. Paul, the Rev. Oliver White, senior minister of Grace Community Church, lost nearly all his 70 congregants after he voted in 2005 to support the blessing of same-sex unions in his denomination, the United Church of Christ.<\/p>\n In the Atlanta area, a hub of African-American life, only a few black churches have preached acceptance of gay men and lesbians, Mr. Meredith said. At one of those congregations, Victory Church in Stone Mountain, attendance on Sundays has fallen to 3,000 people, from about 6,000 four or five years ago, said the Rev. Kenneth L. Samuel, the senior pastor.<\/p>\n Some black ministers, like their white counterparts, said they had been moved to reconsider biblical passages about same-sex relations by personal events, like finding out that a friend or relative is gay. Some members of the clergy contend that because of the antipathy to gay men and lesbians, black churches have done little to address the high rate of H.I.V. infection among African-Americans.<\/p>\n \u201cThe church has to come to a point when it has to embrace all the people Jesus embraced, and that means the people in the margins,\u201d Dr. Samuel said. \u201cIt really bothered my congregation when I said that as people of color who have been ostracized, marginalized, how can we turn around now and oppress other people?\u201d
TODAY IN GOD:<\/font>
RELIGION NEWS BITES FOR YOUR SNACKING PLEASURE <\/span>
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PARIS \u2013 Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre is the French nun whose testimony of a mystery cure from Parkinson\u2019s disease could prompt the Roman Catholic Church to beatify Pope John Paul II, an official at the Paris maternity hospital where she works said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
FOR FULL STORY (AP via BELIEFNET) CLICK HERE<\/a><\/p>\n
PETERSBURG, KY. \u2014 Tyrannosaurus rex was a strict vegetarian, and lived with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.<\/p>\n
FOR THE FULL STORY CLICK (LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER)HERE<\/a><\/p>\n
NEW DELHI \u2014 For centuries one of Sikhism\u2019s most distinguishing symbols, the turban is in danger of falling out of favour.<\/p>\n
FOR THE FULL STORY (TELEGRAPH UK) CLICK HERE<\/a><\/p>\n
JERUSALEM \u2013 Marijuana is not kosher for Passover, a pro-cannabis advocacy group says, advising Jews who observe the week-long holiday\u2019s special dietary laws to take a break from smoking the weed.<\/p>\n
FOR THE FULL STORY (REUTERS VIA YAHOO NEWS) CLICK HERE<\/a><\/p>\n
LONDON \u2013 Britain\u2019s Court of Appeal rejected a lawsuit Wednesday from two authors who claimed novelist Dan Brown stole their ideas for his blockbuster novel \u201cThe Da Vinci Code.\u201d<\/p>\n
TO READ THE FULL STORY (AP VIA MSNBC.COM) CLICK HERE<\/a><\/p>\n
ATLANTA \u2014 When the Rev. Dennis Meredith of Tabernacle Baptist Church here began preaching acceptance of gay men and lesbians a few years ago, he attracted some gay people who were on the brink of suicide and some who had left the Baptist faith of their childhoods but wanted badly to return.<\/p>\n
FOR THE FULL STORY (NEW YORK TIMES) CLICK HERE<\/a><\/p>\n