(Updated at 3 p.m. EST to add links to Andrew Sullivan’s call for Pope Benedict’s resignation and to the Whispers in the Loggia blog.) After weeks of speculation over whether Pope Benedict could be linked to the Catholic Church’s coverup of clergy sex abuse in his native Germany, a devastating New York Times story today by religion…

Check out this Washington Post story about Spec. Zachari Klawonn’s struggles as a Muslim soldier in the U.S. Army. (Funny how this story came out the same week as the news about the Army now welcoming Sikh men — whose traditional turbans and beards have also made them targets of Islamophobia, although Sikhism is unrelated to Islam — into service after…

Less than a week after Pope Benedict sent an apologetic letter to Catholics reeling from a clergy sex abuse scandal in Ireland that spanned decades, Irish Bishop John Magee’s resignation has been accepted. According to the Associated Press, Magee apologized to victims of pedophile priests kept in parish posts since he took charge of the southwest Irish…

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to take up a case charging that a superintendent in Everett (near Seattle, my neck of the woods) should not have banned an instrumental performance of “Ave Maria” at a 2006 high school graduation ceremony. According to the Christian Science Monitor: The high court rejected the appeal over the dissent of…

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