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Justin Bieber and his dad get a matching tattoo of the Hebrew word for Jesus
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Citing “flagrant violations” of constitutional and legal procedures, Liberty Counsel has filed a lawsuit to overturn New York’s same-gender “marriage” law that took effect on Sunday.
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A Brazilian pastor and apologist has condemned the Norway massacre, saying nothing can justify the atrocity that took place last Friday, leaving 76 people dead.
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AP – Catholic church officials say the Vatican’s envoy to the United States has been readmitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital with complications after recent lung surgery.
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AP – A Connecticut securities broker has pleaded guilty to federal charges that he swindled investors including members of a Greek Orthodox church out of more than $8 million.
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Several Catholic entities in Australia have issued apologizes to thousands of women over forced adoption practices.
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Reuters – Russia’s Orthodox Christian Church will not claim clerical authority over Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russian and Georgian church leaders said on Tuesday.
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Glenn Hudson is in some trouble with the City of Dallas after the city claims he was caught operating a sex club in a building that is licensed as a church.
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Sometimes memories creep into my mind from my days inside Planned Parenthood. When they do, I try to document them. I don’t always share them…some of them I just won’t ever be able to share with you. Some of them are things most of you wouldn’t want to know. But some of them I can’t [...]
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Physicists directing research through the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) have announced that the existence of the sub-atomic “God particle” will be decided by the end of 2012.
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CNY photo by Mary DiBiase Blaich
Father Eugene J. Carella tells Claudia McDonnell of Catholic New York that he became fascinated with saints as a small boy in Brooklyn, accompanying his great-grandmother to see shrines at their parish church. Today the Staten Island priest has a huge collection of statues and relics.
Relics “remind us of a world beyond our own” and “connect us to the communion of saints,” said the pastor of St. Adalbert’s Parish in the New York Archdiocese.
Relics also are a reminder that saints “were people like us, struggling to live a good life,a Christ-like life, and in the end they won the battle,” he added.
Filed under: Catholic press, clients 
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The scale of wasted human embryos as a result of IVF treatment has been revealed after a written reply was given to a question asked in the House of Lords, reports Christian Concern for our Nation.
Department of Health figures show that over 30 embryos are created for every successful IVF implantation in a woman.
3 million embryos have been created for IVF purposes since 1991 when the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act made the practice legal.
Of these, fewer than 100,000 have been succe… >>
Read the Full Article at ucanews.com
The Vatican’s recall of its special envoy to Ireland has been described as almost unprecedented over the past century. (Conor Spackman, BBC)
Experts say only anti-religious tumult has previously sparked a similar move, for example the return to Rome of the ambassador to China following that country’s forced conversion to communism.
Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza’s departure from Dublin may not be a flight from violent persecution but it is a response to the most significant political pressure on the Catholic church since the formation of the state.
Last week, following the publication of a scathing report into the church’s handling of child abuse cases, the Irish prime minister (taoiseach) turned on the Vatican and its role in what had happened.
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The Vatican’s response on Monday is, according to Michael Kelly from the Irish Catholic newspaper, “a big deal”.
“People just do not speak to the Vatican in that fashion. It is simply not used to people talking about it like that so it will have wanted to be seen to act in a decisive fashion in response,” he said.
However, he cautioned against seeing the move as a “diplomatic fit of pique”, pointing to remarks made by Vatican press spokesperson Father Ciro Benedettini.
Fr Benedettini said that the Papal Nuncio’s recall showed the Vatican wanted “serious and effective collaboration with the (Irish) government”.
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The Irish Times religious affairs correspondent Patsy McGarry believes the situation is more complicated.
He pointed to the latter part of Fr Benedettini’s statement which said that the Vatican’s move “did not exclude some degree of surprise and disappointment at certain excessive reactions”.
Evidence, he said, that the Vatican’s position remains a mixture of contrition and determination to speak out when it believes it has legitimate points to make.
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For Michael Kelly, the latter half of Fr Benedettini’s statement is merely a bid for restraint amid calls for more stringent government action against the Vatican.
“Charlie Flanagan, the leader of the Fine Gael parliamentary party, called for the expulsion of the Papal Nuncio and I think Fr Benedettini’s remarks have to be seen in the light of that.
“If we remember back to last year when Irish passports were found to have been used by Israeli and Russian secret agents, the Irish government only acted to expel some junior diplomats, despite the seriousness of the situation.
“The expulsion of a diplomat is not a decision taken lightly and I don’t think that the gravity of this situation merits it.”
FULL STORY
What does the Papal Nuncio’s recall mean? (BBC)
In aftermath of Irish report on abuse, Vatican recalls nuncio (Catholic News Service)
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Vatican recalls Ireland’s apostolic nuncio for “consultations” (Rome Reports)
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Protesters began a three-day hunger strike in New Delhi today to demand statutory benefits for fellow Christians from former “untouchable” castes.
“Ours is a non-violent movement and we will fight till we get justice,” Archbishop Vincent Concessao of Delhi told around 150 people gathered at Jantar Mantar, a venue in the Indian capital for public protests.
The hunger strike will end with a large march on parliament on July 28 attended by bishops, pastors and laity from all Christian denominations, Father G. Cosmon Arokiaraj, one of the organizers, said.
Father Arokiaraj, secretary of the Catholic bishops’ conference’s Commission for Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribes and Backward Castes, said people from other religions are expected to join the rally.
The hunger strike and the rally are being organized by the National Coordination Committee for Dalit Christians, a joint body set up by the bishops’ conference and the National Council of Churches in India.
Archbishop Concessao accused the United Progressive Alliance-led government of being the main obstacle to Christians achieving their goal and of misleading people.
By not granting Scheduled Caste status for dalit Christians the government “is asking for trouble,” he warned.
Rights groups have for decades demanded statutory benefits for Christian and Muslim dalits to help their socioeconomic advancement.
The Indian Constitution provides seats in legislative houses, allocates jobs and provides places in educational institutions for Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh dalits.
However, Christians and Muslims are denied these benefits under the pretext their religions do not recognize the caste system.
Christians argue that such a stand violates a constitution that grants equal rights to all citizens.
Church urges immediate adoption of dalit-rights report
Christians threaten to withdraw support for ruling party
Read the Full Article at Front Page Stories
A Wesleyan Methodist pastor is questioning how his denomination’s pension fund is invested.
Read the Full Article at Mission Network News
Iraq (MNN) — An Iraqi pastor was recently kidnapped and is expected to face death at the hands of his attackers.
Voice of the Martyrs, Canada reports that the house church leader's daughter recently witnessed her father's capture when a group of militants broke into their home.
Pastor Jamal reportedly works among the Shabak people–a people who have Jewish roots and speak Arabic and Kurdish. Several weeks ago, militants attacked the home of one of Jamal's converts with machine gun fire.
It is suspected that the militants targeted Jamal because he has led many Muslims to Christ. It's feared that the pastor will not be released, but instead will likely be killed by his captors.
Over the past several months, hundreds of thousands of believers have fled Iraq out of fear of just such an incident. (Read more about that here.) Pastor Jamal has bravely remained where he is but is paying the consequences for his faith in this hostile environment.
Pray that Jamal's capture would not be incentive for Christians to flee the region. Pray that believers would remain bold in their faith despite this frightening setback.
Pray for Jamal's safety and for peace for his family. Follow up with the pastor's plight on the Voice of the Martyrs Web site.
To learn more about the persecuted Christ-followers of Iraq, click here.
Read the Full Article at ucanews.com
Christian leaders have hit out at a newspaper report claiming a priest raped a 14-year-old girl and forced her to have an abortion, saying the accused man is not even a clergyman.
The Express Tribune in its July 20 edition reported the arrest of the man, “a local priest”, for allegedly raping a Christian girl in Kokianwala, in Punjab province.
The report went on to say that the man also forced the girl to have an abortion which was botched.
The girl’s family says he first raped their daughter several months ago behind the town’s Pentecostal church where he taught at a Sunday school.
He continued the assaults over the next four months threatening he would have her killed if she went to the police, they added.
The girl died last week following emergency surgery after the abortion left her with internal injuries and an infection.
Pastor Sadique Patras who heads the Pentecostal Church in Faisalabad, denied he was either a Catholic priest or a pastor.
“He was the leader of our prayer group who posed as a pastor on pastoral visits. He said the sex was consensual and denied raping her or threatening her life,” he said.
Father Shafique Hadayat, a spokesman at the Bishop’s House in Faisalabad, said the newspaper report was grossly inaccurate and that the newspaper should have consulted the Catholic Church before publishing the story.
“The headline was a shocker and insulted the Church. The reporter had absolutely no idea about Christian terms and titles,” he said.
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by Hilary White, Rome Correspondent DUBLIN, July 25, 2011 (http://www.lifesitenews.com/) – The Catholic Church in Ireland has been “without any leadership effectively for the last 15 years” says theologian and former student of Pope Benedict XVI, Fr. Vincent Twomey. Twomey, the emeritus professor of moral theology at Maynooth…
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The state of Kansas has issued a new legal filing in response to a lawsuit the Planned Parenthood abortion business has filed in response to a new law it approved revoking the taxpayer funding for the abortion business. The state says the 10th Amendment allows it to determine tax funding. “The proposed injunction would commandeer [...]