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NPR.org, April 2, 2005 · "Tip O'Neill was correct," says Father Tom Reese, editor in chief of America, the Catholic weekly magazine. "All politics is local... even in the Catholic Church." Reese suggests that instead of focusing on the possible papal candidates as a bookie would look at horses in the starting gate, try to think about the election from the point of view of the electors, the cardinals who cast the votes. "Each cardinal is thinking, how will this candidate go over in my diocese?" Reese says. "If you're from the Third World, you're concerned with people who are...

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (Reuters) -- The United States has demanded that the IRA disband after the guerrilla group's astonishing offer to shoot the killers of a murdered Northern Ireland Catholic man. "It's time for the IRA to go out of business," U.S. special envoy Mitchell Reiss said Wednesday. For the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein, Northern Ireland's biggest Irish nationalist party, the U.S. demand was yet another blow to its democratic credentials. Reiss told BBC radio: "It's time for Sinn Fein to be able to say explicitly, without ambiguity, without ambivalence, that criminality will not be tolerated. "You can't sign...

Eight years ago, a handful of Roman Catholic families in Huntersville, a suburb of Charlotte, N.C., started a new parish. The home of their church, St. Mark, was a bowling alley. Our Lady of the Lanes, as they jokingly called it, was an apt symbol of the scarcity--and supple ingenuity--of Catholics in a region known as the buckle of the Protestant Bible Belt. Soon St. Mark was gaining a family a day. Now its almost 2,800 families hear Mass in a cavernous gymnasium as they await completion of a new church. Among the newcomers is Ben Liuzzo, 54, a financial-services...

Roughly half of America dislike everything George Bush says, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t the President of the United States. This is a point too few people keep in mind. Take, for instance, the example of Stas, a very nice Orthodox man, who read my recent piece on concerning the Muslim reporter who implicitly threatened to kill me and nuke America. He thought the piece excellent except for my statement that the Pope was the head of Christianity: “As for the Pope, 1 billion various protestants and 300 million Orthodox don't follow his words and that's half of Christianity.”...

Protestants in north-eastern Turkmenistan have been threatened for holding services and preaching Christianity, Forum 18 News Service has learned.  "The head of the village administration, the police, the National Security Ministry (NSM) secret police and Muslim clergy in the person of the mullah started to put pressure on them," local believers who wished not to be named told Forum 18. As well as threatening to deport the Protestants from their village if they continue to hold services, local officials threatened to cut off gas and electricity supplies to the family home and withhold pensions, a serious threat in impoverished Turkmenistan.

TATARSTAN (ANS) -- The pastor of a small church in the mainly-Muslim republic of Tatarstan reports he was recently visited and threatened by a security official, ASSIST News Service (ANS) has learned. Felix Corley of Forum 18 News Service writes that Rafis Nabiullin, a Tatar pastor of a small Evangelical church in the town of Aznakayevo in the mainly Muslim-populated republic of Tatarstan, the capital of which is Kazan 800 km. (495 miles) east of Moscow, has complained of threats from a local FSB security service officer to halt the church's activity and drive him out of the town. The...

Here is a list of “religious” members of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. The list is from their website. Some may be surprised to see that their “churches” are officially pro-abort “churches.” The list: Conservative Judaism Rabbinical Assembly United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism Women’s League for Conservative Judaism Episcopal Church The Episcopal Church Ethical Culture Movement American Ethical Union National Service Conference of the American Ethical Union Humanist Judaism Society for Humanistic Judaism Presbyterian Church (USA) Presbyterians Affirming Reproductive Options (PARO) Women’s Ministries Washington Office Reconstructionist Movement Jewish Reconstructionist Federation Reform Judaism Central Conference of American Rabbis North American...

The deepest and darkest joke I’ve heard in a long time goes like this. Osama bin Laden prays to the spirit of Yasser Arafat who then appears before him. “Yasser, please help me understand something,” requests Osama. “We’re both fellow terrorists. You’ve even killed more infidels than I have. Yet you get the Nobel Peace Prize, your funeral is attended by heads of state from around the world, and European newspapers compare you to Moses – while I am the world’s most hunted and hated man, reduced to hiding in inaccessible mountain caves. How did you do it? What is...

...There is no doubt that John Kerry showed great skill at embracing deeply contradictory positions, but that does not make him unusual; all politicians have mastered the art of self-contradiction. What was remarkable in this election is that one candidate, President Bush, never changed: He said what he meant and meant what he said. If the Democrats could not appeal to the moral values of people, that fact must have been lost on the 48% of the voters who supported Sen. Kerry.... I am just as mystified by Mr. Friedman's lament that "Christian fundamentalists" are ruining his America by fostering...

The Church celebrates Reformation Sunday on the last Sunday of October, commemorating a significant event in the history of the Reformed tradition. It was on October 31, 1517, that Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg... Reformation Sunday

Archaeologists in Germany say they may have found a lavatory where Martin Luther launched the Reformation of the Christian church in the 16th Century.The stone room is in a newly-unearthed annex to Luther's house in Wittenberg. Luther is quoted as saying he was "in cloaca", or in the sewer, when he was inspired to argue that salvation is granted because of faith, not deeds. The scholar suffered from constipation and spent many hours in contemplation on the toilet seat. 'Earthy Christianity'The lavatory was built in the period 1516-17, according to Dr Martin Treu, a theologian and Luther expert based in...

To an outsider George W. Bush's political demeanor seems little more than stumbling tautology. He utters his campaign message in clipped phrases, filled with bravado and repeated references to God, and to resoluteness of purpose. But to a trained eye and ear these performances have the deliberate balance of a country singer at the Grand Ole Opry. Speaking in a quasi-rural dialect that his critics dismiss as affected, W is telling his core voting groups that he is one of them. No matter that he is the product of many generations of wealth; that his grandfather was a New England...

September 10, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life says that the relationship between religious affiliation and political views is more complex than at first appears. Evangelical Christians, Mainline Protestants and white Roman Catholics were polled for their opinions on a variety of political issues for Pew's Fourth National Survey of Religion and Politics. In general the results show what pro-life activists have known by experience. What are referred to as 'religious traditionalists,' those who adhere closely to the official teachings of their religions, are more likely to hold similar beliefs between religious...

PROTESTANTS CLAIM VISIONS, PROPHETIC WORDS RESEMBLING THOSE OF CATHOLICS There are many Christian "denominations" -- by one count 34,000 that have identified themselves as Christian groups -- and often, of course, they're at odds with each other. This is especially true of "fundamentalist" Christians and Catholics. But they share some intriguing aspects. The charismatic branches of both major groups heal in a way that is similar (whereby the person prayed over often falls gently to the floor, known as "resting" or being "slain" in the Spirit); both pray in "tongues"; and many Christians receive alleged prophecy in the way of...

It is a sign of the times: Baptists, Presbyterians and Methodists worshipping together in Valley, Neb. As CBS News Correspondent Bob McNamara reports, not enough of them are around any longer to support a church of their own faith. "There's more strength in numbers," says Cindy Matteo, a Methodist. "We can do more as a group. We can reach out to more people." But finding more members could be a long reach. A study by the University of Chicago says the number of Americans who still identify themselves as Protestants is dropping to a historic low. "They're very close to...

Benchmark statistical moments are almost always anticlimactic. When the U.S. population shifted from rural to urban areas in 1920, there was no annunciatory thunderclap. And in about 2060, the year by which census figures suggest that non-Hispanic whites will become less than 50% of the population, the switch will have long been old news. Still, such dates have historical cachet, and 2004 soon may too. The University of Chicago's respected National Opinion Research Center (NORC) has reported that the proportion of adult Americans calling themselves Protestants, a steady 63% for decades, fell suddenly to 52% from 1993 to 2002. Not...

America's Protestant majority is about to disappear, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Chicago. Since the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock nearly 400 years ago, America has been a largely Protestant nation. But as early as the end of this year, Protestants likely will make up less than 51 percent of the population for the first time in history, sociologists at the university's National Opinion Research Center surmise in a new report released Tuesday. According to survey results from more than 43,000 Americans gathered over the last 30 years, the percentage of Protestants in the...

The United States will lose its historic status as a majority-Protestant nation as early as this year, according to a national survey released yesterday. Between 1993 and 2002, the proportion of Americans who said they were Protestants fell from 63 percent to 52 percent after decades of stability, according to the study released by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

For the first time in U.S. history, the number of Protestants soon will slip below 50 percent of the nation's population, according to a new survey. "As early as this year and certainly, if the projections hold, within the next two years, the majority of American adults will not be Protestants for the first time since the founding of colonial Jamestown," said Tom W. Smith, director of the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey. "We were always at least a majority Protestant country, and that is about to change." The survey, which was released Tuesday, has studied various aspects...

The United States will no longer be a majority Protestant nation in years to come, due to a precipitous decline in affiliation with many Protestant churches, a new survey has found. Between 1993 and 2002, the share of Americans who said they were Protestant dropped from 63 percent to 52 percent, after years of remaining generally stable, according to a study released today by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. At the same time, the number of people who said they had no religion rose from 9 percent to nearly 14 percent, and many are former...