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Updated to add Rolling Stone link. Scientology has come under a lot of fire in the past year, as the St. Petersburgh Times, CNN and other media outlets — helped along by Anonymous, a kind of WikiLeaks of the organization — have investigated shocking allegations of physical, mental, emotional and financial abuse claims made by…

Check out the medical news out of the Vatican, as covered by my Religion News Service colleague Francis X. Rocca: Vatican to Draft Guidelines for Catholic Hospitals Pope Can’t Be Organ Donor, Church Says (The first story relates to my previous blog posts about Arizona’s ex-Catholic hospital and Pope Benedict’s confusing condoms comment. As for the…

USA Today’s Faith & Reason blog and The Christian Post report that this Super Bowl ad reportedly rejected by Fox execs due to its religious content ran during yesterday’s game after all — at least, it did in Washington, DC. GetReligion also has a post up about Super Bowl commercials, including a roundup of links to…

Comedy Central’s The Daily Show With Jon Stewart had a funny field report last night from Texas, covering the “miracle” of a Jewish Republican’s reelection. The show focuses on how Texas Rep. Joe Straus, Speaker of the Lone Star state’s House of Representatives, was not Christian enough for some — read The Dallas Morning News and Austin American-Statesman for a…

The Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers will face off in Super Bowl XLV this weekend, and there’s been plenty of faith-related coverage leading up to the big day. Here’s a sample, starting with a related preview story about Porn Sunday, in which the evangelical XXXChurch and others will use the occasion to tackle…

NASA astronaut Capt. Mark Kelly, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ husband, delivered the closing prayer at this morning’s National Prayer Breakfast. From CNN’s coverage: At one point during his wife’s hospitalization in Tucson, Mark Kelly said he visited an impromptu memorial set up in her honor outside the hospital. There was no wind, he said, and amid…

For such a short month, February sure does have a lot of holidays! Today is Chinese/Lunar New Year — it’s now the Year of the Rabbit, so my sister-in-law in Hong Kong and her pet bunny are in luck! — and Setsubun-sai, a Shinto celebration. Catholic News Agency has an interesting story about how the Gulf Coast’s Vietnamese…

Just a bit of sillinesss to balance out the Middle East today: It’s Groundhog Day, and Punxsutawney Phil didn’t see his shadow, which means he has predicted an early spring. (Sure, if you live in Seattle, where it’s been mild and sunny all week. Chutzpah, indeed. But if he’s right… perhaps it’ll turn all the…

Updated with more links at 2:30 p.m. EST. It seems like everyone has an opinion about the turmoil in Egypt, including what the implications may be for the region’s Islamic groups and religious freedom. This concerned confusion extends to the fate of the Christian minority (particularly the Coptic Orthodox Church, which already suffered a violent attack on New Year’s Day)…

Updated to add link to Entertainment Weekly story about Mother Dolores Hart. Belief Beat usually covers hard news or stories that make multiple headlines, but now that it’s February, let’s look back at a few interesting January features you may have missed: Check out this New York Times column about a mohel’s experience circumcising an infant that had…
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