Religion News Service

Over 100 monks deemed schismatic have been living on the holy mountain without authorization since 2002.

Rather than contest the overwhelming evidence of anthropogenic climate change, the new climate denialism asserts that such initiatives just won’t work. While this represents a telling shift — call it a strategic retreat — in denialist messaging, it’s also a doubling down on the anti-government ideology that has been a staple of faith-based climate skepticism.

Some Catholic bishops have criticized as anti-Christian a drag-queen tableau reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper" in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics."Keep calm and carry on," writes Thomas Reese.

On Thursday (July 25), Ascension, one of the largest Catholic health care systems in the U.S., announced that it would sell nine hospitals and four post-acute and older adult living facilities in Illinois to Prime Healthcare. Eight of the hospitals would be managed under Prime Healthcare’s for-profit wing.

Religiously affiliated organizations can clash with politicians on humanitarian aid to migrants, raising issues around religious freedom and hospitality to newcomers.

“The targeting of this faith-based agency and broader attacks on the Catholic Church should deeply concern Catholics, religious liberty advocates and all people of good will,” Kerry Alys Robinson, president and CEO of Catholic Charities USA, told Religion News Service in a statement, referring to Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley.

"The campaign for president is long and loud. Campaigning for pope only lasts a few weeks," Thomas Reese writes. "Despite all this, the Democratic National Convention this year is shaping up to be more like a conclave."

"We speak out as Christian leaders with a deep concern for the common good for all affected by war and conflict without exception," reads the letter, which was organized by Churches for Middle East Peace, a coalition of Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox churches based in Washington. Besides a cease-fire and the return of hostages, the letter goes on to call for "the release of Palestinian prisoners held without due process," as well as a free flow of humanitarian aid and a halt on shipping arms into the region.

Every past U.S. president has identified as Christian, and that will not change if Harris is elected in November. But as she runs for president, her religious biography will be not only history-making but will connect her to how many Americans practice and encounter faith.

Faiths United to Save Democracy, a nonpartisan multiracial group with roots in Black church voter mobilization efforts, is expanding its outreach so participants include clergy and lay people of a variety of religions as well as people with no faith affiliation and members of secular organizations.

In Brazil, the forced removal of vulnerable people from privately owned land has created a role for Catholic priests as mediators between landowners and beleaguered communities.

The vision of a synodal church presented in the instrumentum laboris is beautiful, but it is terribly abstract as it presents the theological foundations of the missionary synodal church promoted by Pope Francis.

The use of sport as an evangelical tool is not new for the Catholic Church. Pope Pius X welcomed athletes in 1905 for the first international gymnastics competition in the Vatican gardens.

Synodality makes for a better Eucharist, and the Eucharist creates and nourishes synodality. Both are about communion, participation and mission. But the Eucharistic Revival has a completely different focus.

The same factors that have caused a crisis in the homeowner's insurance market are also affecting churches, who have to choose between paying for insurance or running programs.

'It is time in America that we take back territory,' Sean Feucht said in a video promoting his efforts to build a base on Capitol Hill.

Within hours of the court’s ruling, Catholic leaders from the dioceses that would have overseen the school issued a statement saying they would "consider all legal options." Days later, officials of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City announced plans to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It was Christian clergy — along with an array of religious leaders and parents of various faiths — who filed a lawsuit against the new statute, backed by the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and offices of the ACLU.

The rapid growth of lay efforts to renew Catholic schools is evidence of U.S. Catholics' deep desire to pass their faith on to their children. Seminaries can lend support by reenvisioning their own role.

In the wake of major layoffs in one department of the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Conference, concerns are being raised about whether the department, which works on aid and justice initiatives domestically and internationally, has the capacity to continue its work.