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It didn’t help that Galileo would satirize and mock the Church hierarchy.

But there are some surprising things that will.

Come donkey, it’s time to pray.

If you’re looking for a sure bet, here’s one: until this fall, the vast majority of US Catholics had never heard of Archbishop John Hughes. Then, in September, the Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan published an article…

A look at Christian Reconstructionist Vision Forum’s year end report.

So to see Manhattan itself go belly-up after the storm, to watch how carnal we become when met with loss of power, has been a sobering and a saddening experience. All of this has made me think more squarely about how inured we have become to screens as the mediator of our imaginative lives. Without electricity, we have no escape. Without Playstations and Xboxes, we have no other-worlds. Without fully charged mobile devices, we have no social media. Without our screens, we have lost our spaces of order, our promised places of reliable rules, our escape from reality. Whereas some New Yorkers contented themselves with flashlights and novels during Sandy’s aftermath, others felt compelled to trudge up to the gaudy power-lit mega-screens of Times Square, where at least you could see commercials and fight for seats at Starbucks.

Warren’s prayer began with all of us, narrowed itself to the Judeo-Christian monotheist, then more narrowly still on the Christian, then more narrowly still on that faith as experienced by Rick Warren himself. A stunning rhetorical achievement.

The incoming congress includes the first homeschooled member and a homeschooling activist.

Quick, what organization was founded to support justice for immigrants, boasts nearly two million (all-male) members, and loves a good parade? The Knights of Columbus still support immigrants’ rights, but those sober-faced men marching down Main Street in full parade regalia are also part of an organization that was the single largest donor in support of California’s Proposition 8. As it turns out, this venerable fraternal order has taken up the anti-equality baton in a big way since then.

RD talks to Mark Van Stone, author of 2012: Science and Prophecy of the Ancient Maya, who claims that the real lesson of the Maya is that they showed us how to destroy a civilization by stupidly using up their environment and by not planning for a bad year.