Lets face it monogamy really doesn't work very well for the powerful and/or famous and/or politicians. But serial monogamy works. Well for the others but not for politicians. See they are not allowed to get divorced. Or have affairs. The rich have pre-nups. Politicians can't even do that. Of course not, that's something you do so you can get divorced without upsetting the economic apple cart. Since they can't get divorced there's no need for pre-nups.

Like Bill Clinton, Mark Sanford really didn't break any laws. Well that's not quite true. South Carolina is one of those really socially retrograde states that still have laws against adultery on the books. But the state would have had a really hard time proving it if Sanford hadn't blabbed. If he and his wife had simply stuck to their personal privacy rights... Well it still wouldn't have worked, but damn it sure would have been more honest.

Charles Lewis | June 27

National Post - Pope Benedict, whose official pronouncments mostly cover matters or religious faith and sexual behaviour, is about to weigh in on the ills of the economy.

In Charity in Truth, which should be released next week, he is expected to point out the failings of capitalism and lament the world's roiling markets, exploited workers and the harsh disparity between rich and the poor.

"Many conservatives will be shocked and disappointed by the encyclical, which will reflect Benedict's skepticism toward unbridled capitalism based on greed," wrote Father Thomas Reese, an American Jesuit scholar and an expert on the Vatican.

The St. Petersburg Times has a three part series on the Church of Scientology.

Mark C. "Marty" Rathbun left the Church of Scientology staff in late 2004, ending a 27-year career that saw him rise to be a top lieutenant to Miscavige in the organization. For the past four years, he has lived a low-profile life in Texas. Some speculated he had died.

In February, Rathbun posted an Internet message announcing he was available to counsel other disaffected Scientologists.

"Having dug myself out of the dark pit where many who leave the church land," he wrote, "I began lending a hand to others similarly situated."

...will absolutely take place july 8 at 4:05.06...

In 1631, an exhausted 46-year-old woman arrived at the gates of the Vatican. Mary Ward, a Yorkshire-born nun, had walked more than 1,500 miles from her order in present-day Belgium to Rome, knowing that she might end up in prison.

For more than two decades, she had been leading an order of devotees that lived in defiance of the Vatican's strict rules that confined nuns to their cloisters.

Ward had taught her religious sisters not to wear habits and trained them to work with the poor and the persecuted, and to found and teach in Catholic schools. She also encouraged women to perform in plays, a move considered scandalous in Shakespearean times when all female roles were played by boys.

She was living at the height of the Roman Inquisition where accusations of heresy abounded. The pope at the time was Urban VIII, the same pontiff who threw Galileo in prison for daring to suggest that the Earth orbited around the Sun.

Now this revolutionary woman had gone to Rome asking him for official approval of her rebellious order which lived in defiance of centuries of Catholic teaching.

It was, therefore, perhaps of little surprise that Urban threw Ward in jail and issued a papal bull ordering her movement to be suppressed. The Independent

Riazat Butt | June 8

The independent - The first accredited Islamic college in the US is being planned by an influential Muslim body hoping to produce "a generation of indigenised scholars".

The management committee from the Zaytuna Institute, which is dedicated to classical Muslim scholarship, last week recommended launching Zaytuna College in autumn 2010. The board of trustees is expected to vote on it later this month.

The college would be open to men, women, Muslims and non-Muslims, and would be on a level comparable to the best religious seminaries and higher education institutions in the US, the brochure says.

The initiative, described as a "Muslim Georgetown", is backed by widely respected Islamic scholars and clerics across the world, who argue there is a need for institutions that can wed religious texts to a contemporary context.

Elizabeth Nash | Madrid | June 8

The Independent - The British film-maker Roland Joffe, who made his mark with his religious drama The Mission about crusading Jesuits in the Brazilian jungle, is to tackle an even more controversial chapter in the history of Catholicism: Opus Dei. Joffe is to recreate the life and miracles of Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer, the Spanish priest who founded one of the most influential and secretive organisations within the Catholic church, and was canonised in 2002. The film seems set to stir up more controversy, following in the wake of several screen hits tapping into public fascination with tales of Opus-inspired crimes and conspiracies, which have set Vatican chasubles aflap.

The Opus furiously condemned the blockbusting Da Vinci Code in 2006, and its sequel Angels and Demons currently topping the bestseller lists. Opus members were banned from seeing or talking about Javier Fesser's award-winning Camino, 2008, about the cult of suffering. By contrast, Joffe's There be Dragons has received Opus Dei's blessing. "The film team asked us for help in gathering information and we gave them access to the documentation. That's the beginning and end of our collaboration with this film," says Luis Gordon, Opus Dei's former information officer. Mr Gordon said he was reserving judgment on the project's merits. The organisation denies reports that it was providing funds.

MIchael Slackman | Cairo | May 26

NYT - The garbage collectors of Cairo live in neighborhoods spilling over with trash. The children play with the trash and in the trash, when they are not helping to sort or collect the trash. The women sit right in the trash, picking out rotten food with their hands and tossing it to their pigs, which live right there in the neighborhood with them.

Slideshow

Really interesting article about the zabaleen and the slaughtering of pigs in Eygpt

Party's Views Conflict With Those of College, Administrators Say

Washington Post, By Anita Kumar, May 23

RICHMOND, May 22 -- Liberty University will no longer recognize its campus Democratic club because, officials say, the national party's platform goes against the conservative Christian school's moral principles.

Officials at the private Lynchburg school, which was founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, said they made the decision after receiving complaints from trustees, parents and donors.

David Sharrock | Dublin | May 20

The Times (London) - The long wait is finally over today for thousands of Irishmen and women who suffered horrendous abuse at the hands of Catholic nuns, priests and monks inside state-sponsored children’s institutions.

A decade has almost passed since the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse was established after the Irish Government was shamed by a television documentary series into apologising to victims and promising inquiries and compensation.

Today the commission will unveil the fruits of its labours; a 3,500-word report running to five volumes which cost 70 million euros to compile, amid claims that its work was often secretive and controversial.

President Obama has come to Notre Dame, though he knows well that we are fully supportive of Church teaching on the sanctity of human life, and we oppose his policies on abortion and embryonic stem cell research..Others might have avoided this venue for that reason. But President Obama is not someone who stops talking to those who differ with him... The world you enter today is torn by division – and is fixed on its differences.. too often differences lead to pride in self and contempt for others.

Dr John Jenkins, Notre Dame president.more

“We must find a way to live together as one human family... Our very survival has never required greater cooperation and understanding among all people from all places than at this moment in history.... Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions ...So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women.”

President Barack Obama. more

Paul Farhi | May 16

WaPo - PBS stations are debating the limits of one of public television's basic commandments: Thou shalt not broadcast religious programming. The discussion, some station managers fear, could lead to a ban on broadcasts of local church services and other faith-oriented programs that have appeared on public stations for decades despite the prohibition.

The Public Broadcasting Service's board is to vote next month on a committee's recommendation to strip the affiliation of any station that carries "sectarian" content. Losing its PBS relationship would mean that a station could no longer broadcast programs that the service distributes, from "Sesame Street" to "Frontline."

Laurie Goodstein | Milwaukee, WI | May 14

NYT - In spring 2002, as the scandal over sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests was escalating, the long career of Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, one of the church’s most venerable voices for change, went up in flames one May morning.

On the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the archbishop watched a man he had fallen in love with 23 years earlier say in an interview that the Milwaukee archdiocese had paid him $450,000 years before to keep quiet about his affair with the archbishop — an affair the man was now calling date rape.

The next day, the Vatican accepted Archbishop Weakland’s retirement.

Maev Kennedy | May 15

The Guardian - The correct Roman Catholic sexual position is not, as many might imagine, missionary, infrequent and with the lights out, but "saucy, surprising and fantasy packed".

The bleak traditional view was St Paul's injunction to the Corinthians: "It is better to marry than to burn with passion." However, a Polish priest who has written a surprising bestselling sex manual dubbed the "Catholic Kama Sutra" believes it is better still to marry and burn with passion.

The first edition of the book by Father Ksawery Knotz, a Franciscan from a monastery outside Krakow, titled Seks (in very large letters) and "for married couples who love God" in rather smaller type, has sold out and is being hastily reprinted in Warsaw.

Donald Macintyre | Jerusalem | May 13

The Independent - The Vatican has defended Pope Benedict XVI against continued complaints within Israel that he had not gone far enough in his denunciation of the Holocaust during his first papal trip to the Holy Land.

The 82-year-old Pope kept up a punishing schedule in Jerusalem yesterday, holding talks with the most senior Jewish and Muslim clerics, presiding over the first of three open air masses and visiting the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall, where he placed a written prayer for peace in the stones.

But although the Pope was at pains to lament the "horrific tragedy of the Shoah" in his speech at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial on Monday, Israel's right-wing parliamentary speaker Reuven Rivlin joined the critics yesterday, saying that as a German, the pontiff should have expressed more remorse. The Pope was also criticised for not naming the Nazis as the Holocaust's perpetrators.

Mr Rivlin said: "The Pope spoke like a historian, as somebody observing from the sidelines, about things that shouldn't happen. But what can you do? He was part of them. With all due respect to the Holy See, we cannot ignore the baggage he carries."

Riazat Butt | May 7

The Guardian - Survey shows UK Muslims have more conservative attitudes on sex than Muslims in France and Germany

Muslims in Britain have zero tolerance towards homosexual acts compared to their counterparts in France and Germany, according to a survey published today.

The Gallup poll features the results of telephone and face-to-face interviews with Muslims and non-Muslims in the UK, France and Germany and is designed to measure global attitudes towards people from different faith traditions.

Hamil R. Harris | Washington | May 7

WaPo ( "44" blog) - Evangelical author and radio host James Dobson said that he is "disappointed" that for the first time in nearly two decades there was no representative from the White House during the National Day of Prayer event.

"I have not asked to meet with the president and certainly he has not asked to meet with me, but I would just like this country to remember its foundation, to remember its heritage and honor it, especially on the day set aside by George Washington in the beginning for prayer in this country," he said. "And I would hope that that would have occurred."

Michelle Boorstein | Miami, FL | May 7

WaPo - His audience is reportedly in the tens of millions. His relationship advice in his books, TV and radio shows has spurred the nickname "Father Oprah." Hispanic Catholics and believers across Latin America follow the handsome priest whose parish is the Miami beachfront. But will the Rev. Alberto Cutié actually shift the centuries-old debate on celibacy?

The argument was in full bloom yesterday on Hispanic radio, in newspapers and on the Web over the case of Cutié (pronounced koo-tee-AY), whose Web site, media ministries and parish assignment were shut down yesterday by his superiors after the release this week of steamy photos of him kissing and caressing a bikinied brunette on a Florida beach.

Peter Popham | Rome | May 7

The Independent - Women may be as far as ever from gaining the right to become priests or even altar girls in the Catholic Church, but the Vatican's gates creaked open a chink this week when the new head of the Pontifical Swiss Guard said that female soldiers could join its ranks.

"It could be possible," Commander Daniel Anrig said. "I can imagine them having one role or another." The need to share cramped barracks with the male soldiers "could be a problem," he admitted, "but every problem has a solution".

The commander gave no commitment and outlined no time-frame for the reform, but even a symbolic openness to the idea marks a striking change from his predecessor, Elmar Maeder, who in 2004 rejected the possibility outright. "The presence of women could create problems in a small army in which 60 per cent of the soldiers are young men under 25," he said.

Jerome Taylor | Apr 29

The Guardian - Atheists have become the latest group to cash in on Britain's booming summer camp industry by creating the country's first-ever retreat for irreligious children. Billed as a "godless alternative" to traditional religious summer camps, the five-day retreat is being hosted by Camp Quest, an American organisation which uses the advertising slogan "Beyond Belief" and has a growing following in the States.

The existence of a humanist summer camp where religion is approached in a critical and rational manner adds to a growing pantheon of US-style holiday getaways in Britain ranging from evangelical Bible schools to fat camps for obese teenagers.

Camp Quest was founded in 1996 as an alternative to the Boy Scouts of America, which insists on members signing a "Declaration of Religious Belief". In response Camp Quest set up an alternative summer camp for the children of "atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers and all those who embrace a naturalistic rather than supernatural world view".

"We want to provide a space where people can learn that it is OK to be an atheist and that a lack of religion does not mean a lack of morals or ethics.

Jane Lampman | Apr 28

CSM - America is a country on the move in innumerable ways, and religion is no exception. Half of Americans have changed their religious denomination at least once in their lives – many several times – and 28 percent have joined a new religious tradition altogether. Amid this fluidity, the number of "unaffiliated" adults has grown to 16 percent of the population.

What is behind such extraordinary "churn" in US religious life? As a follow-up to its pathbreaking 2007 survey of the American religious landscape, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a new survey Monday – "Faith in Flux" – that explores in depth the patterns and reasons for such remarkable change.

Most people who switch their allegiance during their lifetime, the survey finds, leave their childhood faith while they are still young, before the age of 24. Yet the opportunities for attracting them to another religion appear to continue for some time.

The reasons for leaving differ according to the origin and destination of the convert. Roman Catholics, for instance, tend to leave because they don't accept certain church teachings. Protestants, who most frequently switch Protestant denominations, do so more often in response to life changes such as relocation or marriage, or because of dislikes about institutions or practices.

Robert Marquand | Berlin | Apr 27

CSM - In the United States, teaching religion in public schools is political dynamite. In France, forget it. But in Germany they've done it for decades.

Except, that is, in Berlin, where postwar policies framed with help from the old Soviet Union have kept faith out of the classrooms.

But in a city that sociologist Peter Berger once called "the world capital of modern atheism," a surprisingly robust grass-roots Pro-Reli movement by churches is challenging the traditional ethics classes that they say are poor substitutes for the religion teaching offered to other German pupils.

The churches seem to have captured a moment – along with a whopping 256,000 signatures for a referendum on the topic. They flooded streets with posters asking for a "free choice between ethics and religion." The result is a hot battle over values and city identity.

Today, Berliners are voting on whether to keep the required ethics class or broaden the curriculum to include a required class on a religion – Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Judaism, and others. Ethics is one of the options.

"There is nothing wrong with ethics classes, if they are neutral," says Christoph Lehmann, a devout Catholic and lawyer who started the Pro-Reli cause at his living room table a year ago. "But religious tradition is about creating a standpoint in life, and we feel the ethics class doesn't do this as well."

At the forefront of the debate is the issue of integrating Muslims. Berlin now has more than 200,000 Muslim students – almost half the student body in some districts. Exposing Muslim children to the Koran from teachers accredited through the state is seen by many Berliners as a check on extreme readings of Islam; and this is a key selling point for the pro-religion cause.

Saeed Shah | Mingora, Pakistan | Apr 4

McClatchy Newspapers - A hundred miles northwest of Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, the Swat valley offers a chilling vision of what much of the country could become.

Where tourists once frolicked, extremists are laying the groundwork for religious courts to dispense brutal punishments under their harsh interpretation of Islamic law.

The leader of the group, Sufi Mohammad, said penalties including flogging, chopping off hands and stoning to death must be available to Swat's Islamic courts.

Floggings are the proper punishment for sexual intercourse between unmarried people, drinking alcohol and slander, Mohammad said. Thieves should have their hands chopped off, except for poor people who steal to feed themselves. The punishment for adultery is death by stoning.

"These punishments are prescribed in Islam. No one can stop that. It is God's law," said Mohammad, sitting on the floor in his makeshift headquarters in Mingora, the regional capital. Mohammad, the head of the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariaht-e-Mohammadi, or Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law, spoke in a rare interview with McClatchy.

Outcry in Pakistan after video of a 17-year-old girl's flogging by the Taliban is shown on TV ~ video at link

Hey! lets send them more of our money

Bradley Brooks | Rio De Janiero | Apr 3

LA Times - A Roman Catholic archbishop whose statements about the Holocaust have come under fire met with Jewish leaders this week to clarify his claim that Jewish domination of the media has obscured the toll of non-Jews killed by the Nazis.

Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League condemned the comments by Archbishop Dadeus Grings, who was quoted by Brazil's Press magazine last week as saying: "More Catholics than Jews died in the Holocaust, but this isn't known because the Jews control the world's media."

Grings, who leads one of Brazil's largest dioceses and is the chancellor of the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, has been criticized before for his views on the matter. In 2003 he argued that only 1 million Jews died in the Holocaust, although he backed away from that in an interview with The Associated Press this week, saying it "is evident that 6 million Jews were killed."

However, he repeated the suggestion that Jewish media power was distorting the picture.

_{The author and playwright Hanif Kureishi was born in London in 1954. He is the author of The Buddha of Suburbia, Intimacy and Something to Tell You. His first play, Soaking the Heat, was staged in 1976, and My Beautiful Laundrette , for which he wrote the screenplay, was released in 1985. He was appointed CBE in 2007, for services to literature and drama. Here he briefly tells BBC News his thoughts about religion.}

Would you describe yourself as religious?

I've always been fascinated by religion. For me it's the deepest form of human expression, along with culture.

God is mankind's finest creation. Has there been a better idea than that of God?

Do you believe in God, and if so, what sort of god?

I believe in the need to understand what the idea of God, or gods, do for us.

What religious leader, if any, most inspires you?

Most religious leaders are ignorant fools.

It's a shame so few of them are intelligent or even interesting.

It makes you wonder why the dullest people hang around religions. Gives the whole thing a bad name.
more at BBC