We watched “The Greatest Show on Earth” last night–I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid. It’s fashionable to pick on this DeMille epic, and there are indeed things to laugh at, notably DeMille’s narration as Charlton Heston prepares the circus to leave its winter grounds in Sarasota–it’s too easy to parallel it with…

English nurse gives wrong woman abortion–merely “cautioned” by her supervisors. Via Hugo.

Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi of Uganda says the Archbishop of Canterbury has betrayed the Anglican communion. The peculiar thing is that this one man, who is at the centre of the communion’s structures, is not even elected by his peers. Even the Pope is elected by his peers, but what Anglicans have is a man…

Cardinal Walter Kasper addressed the Lambeth Conference. Sandro Magister has his talk. Fr. John Z. comments.

No apologies needed, writes Jim Nix.

The International Olympic Committee is cooperating with the Chinese government in all things–and agreed to the internet censorship the Chinese have imposed on journalists. “IOC officials negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis they were not considered Games related.” In other words, journalists in China for the games won’t…

We suffer from $4 gas, and ExxonMobil execs laugh all the way to the bank.

Bush administration wants to ensure religious freedom of health care workers—lots of people are opposed. The regulation would require that medical schools accept students who are opposed to abortion; that hospitals must agree to hire doctors, nurses, and other professionals who may be opposed to it, or they won’t receive federal money. And state and…

Billy: The Early Years

Case study: covering a controversial ordination.

Has Mundelein changed? Nope.

John T. Baldwin, ed., Creation, Catastrophe, and Calvary: Why a Global Flood Is Vital to the Doctrine of the Atonement (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2000). Baldwin and his fellow authors argue that the Biblical narrative of salvation history constitutes an integral whole; it moves from special creation, through the fall, which led to the…

Jewel Redhead is suing a Seventh-day Adventist school for $2 million–because she was fired from her job as a teacher because of a moral lapse. She thinks her moral life should have no impact on her job, even though she was teaching religion, among other subjects, at a Christian school. “‘I am a good teacher,’…

Steve Waldman, head of BeliefNet, argues that if conservatives want fewer abortions, they need to push contraception, not abstinence. He takes a pragmatic, rather than a moral approach, to what conservatives see as a moral issue. He’s dissing Al Mohler, who says that the problem is the social acceptance of out of wedlock births is…

In Texas, it’s illegal to campaign in the polling place–or within 100 feet (or so) of the door. There can be no campaign posters or literature inside. This is to make sure voters aren’t intimidated. Evidently, California doesn’t have a problem with voter intimidation by  campaigns–Attorney General (and former governor) Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown is changing…

Dottie Zimmerman (HT: Diogenes) is a 63-year-old 8th grade religion teacher at St. Patrick of Heatherdowns Catholic School in Toledo. Oh, and she says St. Pio of Pietrelcina (aka Padre Pio) speaks to her every day. She’s also taken to doing public “channeling” of him. Her 16-year-old daughter talks to angels, and told her mom…

It’s fashionable to apologize. In 1992 Lutheran churches apologized for the actions of Columbus–who wasn’t a Lutheran, and at a time when there were no Lutheran churches anywhere in the world. The Lutheran World Federation has come up with an apology that makes sense, and is long over due–directed to the Anabaptists, who were directly…

At Naked Religion, consideration of the reason for decline in adult Christian education: What are some of the contributing factors you ask? Well the most obvious is the increasing busyness of our culture that has unfortunately transgressed even to Sunday mornings. While I’m not arguing for a return to the ‘blue laws’ in the middle…

The Governator thinks that cops too often try to make peace instead of arrests at abortion clinic protests –while the protesters say it is they who need protecting, not the clinics.

Yep.

Abel Cruz is a 17-year-old suffering from cancer. The young adults of my church have organized a campaign to help his family raise money. Learn more, and donate on-line, at hesabel.com.

Times op-ed by one Minette Marrin says there’s only one way for a society to protect itself from Islamic extremism: get rid of all religious influence. What follows inescapably from this is that religious people and their views should not be officially recognised in groups. Religion should not be allowed a public space or public…

Newspaper reports Aurora University has a new collection of early Adventist materials. For details, see Jenks Memorial Collection. Auroria University was founded by the Advent Christian Church, one of two denominations, including the Seventh-day Adventist Church, tracing their origins to Miller’s movement.

Richard McBrien of Notre Dame is one of the most high profile dissenters from Catholic teaching on marriage and sexuality. In his latest column, he marks the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae by quoting both his own words and those of other dissenting theologians and bishops. Now, what I want to draw attention to is…

In Colorado, a dozen SWAT officers knocked down a door, threw a family to the floor at gunpoint, and seized an 11 year old child. Why? He had fallen down; a paramedic thought he should go to a doctor–the dad, a military medic in Vietnam, didn’t think so. The paramedics got heated. Dad was firm.…

Pr. Paul McCain, Publisher of Concordia Publishing House, the official publisher of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, reminds us of Lutheran teaching on the papacy, and why confessional Lutherans still hold to it.

Wilifred Cork (my mom) speaks about her name at iReport.com. For me, her name is a connection with my grandfathers … I’m William, she’s Wilifred, her dad was Frederick William, his dad was also Frederick William, and his father was William.

If you want to know about genuine Celtic Spirituality, check out the volume with that title in the Paulist Classics of Western Spirituality series, edited by Oliver Davies. It includes writings by and about Patrick and Brigit, Brendan’s Voyage, the Rule of Columbanus, various Irish and Welsh poems, selections from the Stowe Missal, various homilies,…

Mary Eberstadt, writing in First Things, trumpets The Vindication of Humanae Vitae, while Gerald Naus, reverting to liberalism after a couple of years declaring “the Cafeteria is closed,” heaps scorn on Catholic teaching on sexuality. Humanae Vitae was the 1968 encyclical letter of Pope Paul VI upholding traditional Catholic teaching on sexuality (as stated in…