Questions have arisen about the security of Malala Yousufzai, the teenaged Pakistani girl shot last week by the Taliban, who say they are still trying to kill her for her advocacy of education for girls. She's now being treated in a British hospital, and several people have turned up claiming to be her relatives.
Another teenaged girl, in Timbuktu, Mali, received 60 lashes in front of police headquarters after Islamic extremists - who run the city - convicted her of speaking to men on the street.
A 12th-century mosque in Aleppo, Syria, is the latest causalty of that nation's civil war.
A coalition of evangelical Christians is calling on fellow Christians to boost access to birth control around the globe, saying it does not conflict with evangelical opposition to abortion.
You don't have to be Jewish to appreciate the Forward's "Presidential Debate Drinking Game" to help you get through tonight's verbal sparring. The worse the pandering to the American Jewish community, the more you get to drink.
Catholicism should have its own roundup today . . . news abounds . . .
Beatification seems imminent for Paul VI.
Remember "Frank Pavone the anti-abortion priest"? Things weren't looking good for him a year ago, but he's back from his Texas exile and aiming to defeat President Obama.
The Catholic bishop of Colorado Springs, Michael Sheridan, says no Holy Communion for Vice President Joe Biden in his diocese.
The Archdiocese of New Orleans plans to distribute 5,000 yard signs this week that read: "Thou shalt not kill -- God." They're part of an anti-violence campaign called the "New Battle of New Orleans."
It looks like a Catholic Church, but wait . . . married priests, female priests and gay priests - all OK. Must be the American National Catholic Church.
An Italian Catholic bishop has been expelled from Chad for speaking up about the mismanagement of that nation's oil revenues.
And a Roman Catholic cardinal screened a spurious video at the Vatican that makes alarmist predictions about the Muslim population of Europe.
Don't you just love Downton Abbey? I do. Because they really are doing a splendid job of tackling the issue of anti-Catholicism in England during the Interbellum. Well, maybe that's not the only reason I watch it.
Washington D.C.'s metro didn't want to run the anti-Islam ads taken out by Pam Geller and friends, but transit system officials say they can't take the suggestion from progressive faith groups that revenue from the ads be donated to charity. Portland, Ore., like Washington and New York, is also being forced by a court to run the ads. Judges say the First Amendment requires it.
In the mostly Buddhist nation of Bhutan, the government bans all public religious activity for six months leading up to the nation's 2013 elections.
And an untimely death. On Sunday, a car struck and killed Wycliffe Bible Translators senior vice president Forrest Flaniken, 53, while he was riding his bicycle in Florida.
- Lauren Markoe
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Donnie | Oct 24, 2012 | 1:27am
[Speaking of RC’s and EC’s, here is something I caught on the web.]
The Rapture Belief is Anti-Catholic
Many assert that the “rapture” promoted by evangelicals was first taught, at least seminally, by a Jesuit Catholic priest named Francisco Ribera in his 16th century commentary on the book of Revelation.
To see what is claimed, Google “Francisco Ribera taught a rapture 45 days before the end of Antichrist’s future reign.” (Oddly, many claimants are anti-Catholic and merely use Ribera in order to “find” much earlier historical support for their rapture which actually isn’t found in any official Christian theology or organized church before 1830!)
After seeing this claim repeated endlessly without even one sentence from Ribera offered as proof, one widely known church historian decided to go over every page in Ribera’s 640-page work published in Latin in 1593.
After laboriously searching for the Latin equivalent of “45 days” (“quadraginta quinque dies”), “rapture” (“raptu,” “raptio,” “rapiemur,” etc.) and other related expressions, the same scholar revealed that he couldn’t find anything in Ribera’s work even remotely resembling a prior rapture! (Since the same scholar plans to publish his complete findings, I won’t disclose his name.)
Are you curious about the real beginnings of this evangelical belief (a.k.a. the “pre-tribulation rapture”) merchandised by Darby, Scofield, Lindsey, Falwell, LaHaye, Ice, Van Impe, Hagee and many others?
Google “The Unoriginal John Darby,” “Pretrib Rapture Diehards,” “X-Raying Margaret,” “Edward Irving is Unnerving,” “Walvoord Melts Ice,” “Thomas Ice (Bloopers),” “Wily Jeffrey,” “Deceiving and Being Deceived” by D.M., “The Real Manuel Lacunza,” “Roots of Warlike Christian Zionism,” “Pretrib Rapture Politics,” “Pretrib Hypocrisy” (anti-Catholic evangelical leaders), “Famous Rapture Watchers,” and “Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty” - most of these by the author of the 300-page nonfiction book “The Rapture Plot,” the highly endorsed and most accurate documentation on the long hidden historical facts of the 182-year-old pre-tribulation rapture theory imported from Britain during the late 19th century.