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EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A bitter dispute over abortion that prompted Rhode Island’s Roman Catholic bishop to ask Rep. Patrick Kennedy not to receive Holy Communion has revealed the depth of the divide among Catholics over how politicians should reconcile their faith with their public duties. Bishop Thomas Tobin on Sunday said he made the…

ROME – A Vatican researcher has rekindled the age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin, saying that faint writing on the linen proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus. Experts say the historian may be reading too much into the markings, and they stand by carbon-dating that points to the shroud being a medieval…

WASHINGTON – The White House is on a collision course with Catholic bishops in an intractable dispute over abortion that could blow up the fragile political coalition behind President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. A top Obama administration official is praising the new Senate health bill’s attempt to find a compromise on abortion coverage –…

With his Hindu temple teetering on the verge of foreclosure, the Internal Revenue Service investigating potential tax evasion and his U.S. residency status in doubt, the empire of a self-proclaimed guru in Norcross, Ga., may be crumbling around his ears. Evidence presented at a bankruptcy hearing Thursday indicated that Annamalai Annamalai, who goes by the…

(RNS) In late September, Lutheran dissidents said they would hunker down for a year and study whether to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and create a new church body. Less than two months later, on Wednesday (Nov. 19) Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Renewal) announced that indeed such a body “will likely be necessary.”…

(RNS) Did alleged Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan lose control, at least in part, because he was sexually frustrated? That’s one of the questions being asked in the investigation into the Nov. 5 rampage that left 13 people dead and dozens more injured. According to reports, Hasan visited a nearby strip club in the…

(RNS) After disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard decided to start holding prayer meetings at his Colorado home, advisers and observers, perhaps not surprisingly, reacted with disappointment. But the fact that he’s chosen to host the meetings within a few miles of the Colorado Springs megachurch that dismissed him three years ago — because of a…

BALTIMORE (RNS) Gay Catholics and victims of clergy sexual abuse are hailing preliminary results of a study commissioned by U.S. Catholic bishops that says gay priests are no more likely than straight clergy to sexually abuse minors. Still, some bishops gathered here for the final day of their semi-annual meeting said it is premature to…

(RNS) Blasphemy. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. And the T-shirt reads, “Faith is no reason.” The Center for Inquiry (CFI), an international advocacy group based in Amherst, N.Y., picked that brief phrase as the winner of its first-ever blasphemy contest. Contestants were invited to submit slogans of 20 words or fewer that were…

WASHINGTON (RNS) Americans look less favorably on mosques applying for government funding than other religious charities, a new survey shows. While 27 percent of U.S. adults polled oppose religious charities applying for government funding to provide services to the needy, more than half — 52 percent — were against Muslim houses of worship being eligible…
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