Monday at sundown marks the start of the Jewish festival of Purim, drawn from the story of Queen Esther and recounting the deliverance of the Jews from disaster at the hands of the Persians. As The Jewish Encyclopedia notes, this is the most secular of all holidays–barely registering as “holy”–much like the biblical Book of Esther…

What will Obama do Monday morning when he announces a lifting of the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research? He could add some conditions, which would perhaps mitigate some of the blow-back from the Christian (not Mormon–they hold that it’s not human until implantation) right, though I doubt it. Father Tom Reese,…

That’s the upshot of a story that is roiling Brazil, as a nine-year-old girl who was raped by her stepfather and became pregnant with twins received an abortion. There are conflicting reports as to whether the girl was excommunicated–this Irish Times story indicates the ordinary, Archbishop José Cardoso Sobrinho of Olinda and Recife, says she was not,…

The latest neuroscientific study (such research may be the economy’s lone growth industry) indicates that religious faith can help people chill when things go wrong–and that they will go wrong is one of life’s few guarantees these days. According to this story in Canada’s National Post: “These results suggest that religious conviction provides a framework for understanding and…

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