Free Republic

After toying with the idea for some time now, the Catholic Church has ruled out making compulsory the pre-marital AIDS test for its members, but will encourage counselling services ahead of marriages. "There is no point in making it compulsory, though some quarters have suggested it. If it is made compulsory, it is difficult to stop people from managing certificates from centres of their choice and manipulating. Instead, we will encourage counselling to the aspirants,'' a spokesman of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) told Pharmabiz. Some of the Dioceses in Kerala have been propagating the idea of introducing...

MPs may have voted for stem cell research, but it is unethical and a scientific dead end, writes Cardinal George Pell. IS ALL human life equally precious? We should not be distracted from the elephant in the corner of the room. A huge diversionary tactic has been mounted to focus attention on hypothetical punishments for Catholic politicians by authoritarian bishops, and away from the destruction of human life. Human life is the issue at hand. Serious anti-lifers and publicity seekers have been trying to shoot the messenger, while they work to bury the message. Neither should anyone be tricked into...

JAKARTA (AFP) - Muslim hardliners stormed a church in Indonesia during services, smashing images of Jesus Christ and demanding that it be closed down, the pastor said on Monday. Dozens of churches have had to be closed in the Muslim-majority country in recent years, and Sunday's attack was the second on the small Protestant church in the West Java town of Soreang since 2005. Reverend Robby Elisa, who heads the church, said around 100 hardliners attacked while Sunday school was in session. He said his wife was beaten and that at least four stained glass depictions of Jesus were smashed....

GONGSHAN, China (Reuters) - When China's communist army razed his church, Jesse's grandfather climbed into the forests stacked up above his valley and carved a hole in the trunk of a tree to hide his bible. Half a century later the wilderness is retreating but his grandson, sitting in front of the church and scripture school rebuilt from scratch, no longer needs it. His unusual Protestant faith -- which bans smoking and drinking, celebrates the most sacred communion ritual with honey instead of wine and calls followers to five singing and dancing services a week -- is spreading fast. "I...

The IRS has contacted a Wichita church about whether it has violated rules that prohibit churches from engaging in most political activity, the church's pastor said Thursday. Pastor Mark Holick of Spirit One Christian Center, 1515 E. Harry, said the IRS sent him a letter last month asking him to respond to questions about political activities at the church. Those activities include the pastor's involvement in distributing voter guides and messages on the church's marquee critical of candidates and their stances on abortion. Under IRS tax code, churches and nonprofit groups are prohibited from some political campaign activities, including endorsing...

The Catholic Church in Ireland has appointed a Presbyterian as the head of its child protection unit. Ian Elliot, Director of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in Belfast, is to become the first Chief Executive of the Church's National Board for Child Protection. When he takes up his duties in a month's time, he will have completed two years on secondment to Northern Ireland's civil service where he has led a major reform programme for child protection services. Church sources say he is the first non-Catholic to be appointed to such a senior post in...

Panaji, May 30 (IANS) Goa's Catholic Church, which claims the allegiance of about a quarter of the local population, has been criticized by the Bharatiya Janata Party for its suggestions to the state's voters in the run-up to the June 2 assembly polls. The church has advised the people of Goa to think about their future, Goa's environment and 'not consider candidates who are communal, who use the government machinery to threaten people and people who defect from one party to another for the love of money.' BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu has criticized the local church's stand against communal...

Of all the places to seek the legacy of Pope John Paul II, West 46th Street in midtown Manhattan, just off Broadway and Times Square, is not the most obvious spot to begin. Yet here, on the same block where aspiring actors queue up for auditions in the Actor's Equity building, and in the shadow of splashy billboards touting productions of "Legally Blonde" and Monty Python's "Spamalot," passers-by are met with a grainy black-and-white picture of an intense young Polish cleric, on a poster proclaiming "The Karol Wojtyla Theatre Festival." John Paul always was a pope of firsts, and even...

EAST MANATEE -- A woman previously convicted of embezzling money from the Postal Service was sentenced Thursday to a year in jail for a similar crime against a church. Sally Hackle, 46, was ordered to continue to pay more than $37,000 in restitution to Living Lord Lutheran Church. She also received 15 years of probation as part of her sentence. Circuit Judge Diana Moreland suspended six months of the jail time so Hackle could continue the monthly $1,000 payments to the church. Hackle stole more than $37,000 from the church, where she had been the treasurer, from 2004 to 2005....

MAYETTA — When 83-year-old Eldon Ray agreed to oversee construction of a sanctuary for the Mayetta Christian Church, he felt he was doing something good. But a state regulating board saw it differently and accused him of acting as an architect and engineer without a license — igniting one of Kansas’ strangest bureaucratic disputes in recent years. Ray’s plight, which included a $500 fine from the Board of Technical Professions, began last fall as the two-year project was nearing its end in this eastern Kansas town of about 360 people. It didn’t end until early May, when state lawmakers stepped...

Mayor Tom Menino’s job is in no small measure about protecting jobs, services and people. And so we understand his aversion to the idea that the Archdiocese of Boston may soon leave its city headquarters for, of all things, a low-rise office park in Braintree. Yes, the idea of men in priestly collars working in a generic cubicle farm is, well, a little strange. But the mayor has picked the wrong fight here, as the church struggles to recover from a true financial crisis, to fend off additional church and school closures and - it must be said - to...

LYNCHBURG, Va. — The Rev. Jerry Falwell was remembered by thousands Tuesday as a champion of conservative Christian values who fearlessly galvanized the religious right into a powerful force in American politics. The funeral returned Falwell to his roots — the Thomas Road Baptist Church, where he started as a young preacher in 1956 with just 35 parishioners in an old, abandoned soda bottling plant. More than 10,000 people attended the funeral, many forced into overflow seating. "He was a champion of the fundamental values that we hold dear," fellow Virginia evangelist Pat Robertson said as he entered the sanctuary....

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- Archbishop Buti Tlhagale of Johannesburg has disputed charges of racism in the placement of priests in his diocese and said he does not understand "why an African priest would be so keen to serve a white parish when the need is greater in the African community." It is "not necessarily false to claim that the allocation of priests in parishes in the Diocese of Johannesburg is done along racial lines," the archbishop, who is president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, said in the May 16-22 issue of the Cape Town Catholic newspaper,...

SO WE have been told to put up signs in churches telling people not to smoke. From July 1 it's the law, apparently. I have been going to church reasonably regularly for 46 years and I have never seen anyone light up in pew or aisle. Twenty or 30 years ago it seemed that nearly everyone smoked. Prime Ministers puffed on pipes and politicians would light up while being interviewed on television. Deals were always done in smoke-filled rooms. But no one ever smoked in church. So why do the health Nazis decree that we have to pollute the delicate...

CORDOVA, TN -- In drawing a line where a teenager may drive to help his dying mother, a state agency may have crossed the line -- and violated its own rules. The Tennessee Department of Safety granted 15-year-old Seth Parrish's application for a hardship drivers license. His mother Stephanie is in the late stages of breast cancer -- four to six weeks to live. Since his father cares for her around the clock when he's not a work, Seth secured the hardship license so he can help run errands - school, hospital, groceries, etc. There's just one condition: he can't...

Any host will tell you that the guest list can be a ticklish issue. And none could be more so than the Archbishop of Canterbury's invitations to an important upcoming gathering of the bishops of the 77 million member Anglican Communion, which is currently embroiled in an angry internal debate over the ordination of gay clergy. Earlier today Rowan Williams, the Canterbury Archbishop and thus the first-among-equals in the global religious group that includes the Episcopal Church in the United States, released a statement that he was sending out invitations for the 2008 Lambeth Conference of active Anglican bishops. Lambeth,...

After a lengthy Sunday service, having toilets within the church building can be a real godsend. But a vicar's attempts to offer his congregation that very convenience has left him at risk of losing his job. The Reverend Tom Ambrose, 60, is being dragged before a rarely-convened ecclesiastical church tribunal in a dispute over where to site the loo. Parishioners at St Mary and St Michael Church in Trumpington, Cambridge, say their relationship with him has irretrievably broken down. The storm clouds had been gathering since Mr Ambrose arrived in the parish eight years ago. He wanted to modernise the...

4 Charged With Hate Crime (CBS/AP) MIDDLE ISLAND, N.Y. They defaced a Baptist church with satanic symbols, then bragged about it on the popular MySpace networking Web site, police said. It wasn't long before four people were charged with a hate crime. "We tagged the street with spray paint, then drove to the church we passed on the way there and tagged all over it with inverted crosses, pentagrams, and 6's," said the MySpace page allegedly written by one of the four suspects. "It was quite the sight to see." Suffolk County police said the MySpace boast included images of...

This was a first time. Every year, the Ecumenical Patriarch goes to Cappadocia, to those sites linked to many Church Fathers, which should “contribute to raising awareness about Christian unity.” Istanbul (AsiaNews) – For the first time, the Patriarchate of Moscow participated in a pilgrimage that the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I has held annually since 2000. The pilgrimage is to one of the cradles of ancient Christianity: Cappadocia, the land of origin of great figures of Christianity, like the Fathers of the Church St Basil, John the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa. This year, the pilgrimage was somewhat special because...

Some of Our Ordinands Respond to the Question: “People would be surprised to know that I…” …didn't go to Catholic school and was never an altar boy. …used to play heavy metal guitar in a band. …first considered the priesthood while on a workcamp weekend in high school in the Appalachian mountains. …am a strong supporter on issues concerning the environment. ...love to watch the Food Network …was a practicing physician (radiologist) before entering the seminary. …enjoy riding roller coasters and visiting theme parks… I also love to create things, such as models and sculptures, as well as designing and...