A rebel Catholic traditionalist group has expelled British-born Bishop Richard Williamson who deeply embarrassed the Vatican by denying the Holocaust shortly before he was readmitted to the Church three years ago. The World Jewish Congress (WJC) welcomed the step but said it was “too little, too late” to restore credibility to the Swiss-based Society of…
Pope Benedict urged multi-faith Lebanon on Saturday to be a model of peace and religious coexistence for the Middle East, which he called a turbulent region that “seems to endure interminable birth pangs”. The pope, on the second day of a visit clouded by war in neighbouring Syria and protests across the Muslim world, told…
Pope Benedict arrives in Lebanon on Friday to bring a message of peace to a region torn by civil war in neighbouring Syria and strained by violent Islamist protests against the United States in Libya and Egypt. While those tensions overshadowed preparations for the religiously sensitive visit, security was low-key in Beirut and the only…
Pope Benedict XVI said he regards his upcoming trip to Lebanon as a visit aimed at promoting peace and dialogue in the entire Middle East. Benedict is scheduled to visit Lebanon Sept. 14-18. “My apostolic visit to Lebanon, and by extension to the Middle East as a whole, is placed under the sign of peace,”…
While it seems like Jewish opinion runs the gamut on condom use and birth control, our lack of a centralized authority on such matters — and our cultural and religious tradition of debating everything to death — means there’s long been a variety of pragmatic and idealistic views on the matter, mostly leaning in favor…
If doling out advice — from parenting to relationships to spirituality — to American Jews and Gentiles wasn’t enough, celebrity rabbi Shmuley Boteach has gone for the big score: the Bishop of Rome, the head of the Catholic Church, the Pope. By consulting with Rabbi Shmuley, the Pope joins the ranks of Michael Jackson and…
The popular and ever-elegantly coiffed French moral philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy has weighed in at Huffington Post with a passionate defense of Pope Benedict XVI from the many accusations (including a few of my own) that he’s no friend of the Jews. It seems to me he makes a few points worth considering. As soon as…
A very intriguing piece by Politico’s David Gibson in the Washington Post Sunday Outlook section claims, much as I argued in a column back in August (but in greater depth), that Pope Benedict XVI is engaged in a sweeping campaign to remake the church. In large part what he’s trying to do is to roll…
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