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Pontifications

Only now he’s Joe the Journalist. (Well, he wasn’t really a plumber, either.) As Sarah Pulliam reports, Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. “Joe the Plumber” of campaign fame, told a local Ohio TV station that he plans to report from the Middle East for www.pjtv.com, a conservative Christian Web site, for 10 days. Money quotes: “Being…

Fellow Beliefnet blogger Brad Hirschfield of “Windows and Doors” takes issue with aspects of my post about a Vatican official’s explosive comparison of Gaza to “a big concentration camp.” Brad is at his civil best–no mean feat considering the topic–but has serious problems with a few things. I’ll respond point-by-point: One, Brad says my argument…

The Vatican’s chief spokesman on justice and peace issues, Cardinal Renato Martino, has made waves (and added to doubts over a May papal visit to the Holy Land) by comparing the Gaza Strip to “a big concentration camp.” (CNS has fuller quotes here.) Needless to say, Israeli and Jewish leaders are not happy, and there’s…

Father Neuhaus, the founder of the conservative ecumenical journal of religion and politics and culture and everything else, First Things, died this morning. The magazine longtime second-in-command, Jody Bottum, has this announcement: Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o’clock, at the age of seventy-two. He never recovered from the…

The number of pilgrims and tourists coming to see Benedict XVI is declining steadily, raising alarms about the pontiff’s diminished appeal. According to this CNS story, figures released by the Vatican show that just over 2.21 million people saw Benedict XVI in person in 2008–at the Vatican or the papal villa at Castel Gandolfo, attending…

“I don’t golf. As a matter of fact it leads many people to wonder if I’m really validly ordained.” — Detroit’s Archbishop-elect Allen Vigneron, in an interview upon being introduced to succeed Cardinal Adam Maida, who is still widely remembered for making a hole-in-one at a 2001 charity tournament. [Via Rocco, who has blanket coverage…

Today’s Feast of the Epiphany marks (in the Western Church) the revelation of God in human form–Jesus–to the world, through the symbol of the Magi, the Wise Men or Kings from the East who come to the manger bearing gifts. It is also the end of the Christmas season, and in a sense is the…

That’s the story out of San Antonio and the Express-News (via the DMN blog). It seems that less than a week before her Nov. 22 marriage, 25-year-old Marquis LaFortune (pictured with her husband-to-be) was told she would be fired from her job at a Catholic high school for creating a scandal: The man she is…

According to a Jesuit spokesman in Rome, via this CNS story, the action against Fr. Roger Haight reported below is “a suspension” rather than a final punishment. The process is ongoing, as a committee of three (unnamed) U.S. Jesuit theologians study Haight’s work, with Haight’s cooperation, the article says: “He can continue to teach, but…

Or just pro-Palestinian? Or anti-Israel? Or are they distinctions without a difference? As the violence continues in Gaza the prospects for a papal visit to the Holy Land, anticipated for May, grow more remote. In his weekly analysis, Vaticanista Sandro Magister lays out the case for what he says is Vatican foreign policy that continues…
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