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Today's Top Five

1. FDA issues new warning on abortion pill
The death toll for U.S. mothers who have taken Mifeprex (RU486) is at least seven now. The total death toll for Mifeprex is unknown. It's a big abortion news day: Utah just moved from a parental notification state to a parental consent state, New Hampshire dropped a parental consent clause from a bill on the morning-after pill, and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals approved "Choose Life" license plates.

2. Orthodox Church in America fires chancellor, hires outside auditors
It looks like the investigation, which comes after the church's former treasurer's dramatic accusations about misappropriated funds, is about to get a lot more serious.

3. Seminaries: Not just for pastors anymore
"Across the country, enrollment is up at Protestant seminaries, but a shrinking portion of the graduates will ascend the pulpit," The New York Times notes. "These seminarians, particularly the young ones, are less interested in making a career of religion than in taking their religion into other careers."

4. Churchgoing and war
So which is more revealing: That the Americans most supportive of the Iraq war are also the Americans who most frequently go to church? Or that the Americans least supportive of the Iraq war are also the Americans who never go to church? Does churchgoing make you more of a warmonger? Or does it just make you more likely to support any policy of a Republican president? Do Quakers and Mennonites need to start more mid-week services?

5. WSJ column: Morality isn't just about sex
CT managing editor Mark Galli recently used the Barry Bonds steroid scandal to illuminate his own need for humility and repentance and the universality of human depravity. Today's Wall Street Journal carries an op-ed by Daniel Henninger on a similar note: Sin isn't limited to one kind of moral failure. But he has a bit of a different take. "Politics killed ethical formation," he writes. "What's right and wrong has become as red and blue as our politics." The real problem, he says, is that we've all started meaning "sexual ethics" when we way "ethics." Politics has limited the meaning of "morality" to sexual morality. "Our political culture's preoccupation with sexual boundaries has smothered the more important ability of religious or ethical formation to function in the U.S.," Henninger writes. "Currently the most rigorous whole-person moral system resides among evangelical right—at least in terms of keeping one's earthly life in perspective. But because the religious right has 'positions' on abortion and homosexuality, politics seeks to undermine its entire function in the life of the nation." The "unending sex wars," he argues, have "obliterated the ability to talk rationally in public about anything that smacks of 'religion.' … Maybe it's time for the sex obsessives on the left and right to take their fights over abortion and gay rights into a corner somewhere and give the rest of society space to restore some ethical rootedness in an endlessly variable world."

Quote of the day:
"You've got to like puzzles. That's for sure."

—Anthony Fontana, a craftsman who is restoring the stained glass windows of New Orleans churches.

By the way
If all the talk about St. Patrick has made you happy today, you might want to consider picking up Christianity and the Celts, a heavily illustrated, approachable book on Patrick and other highlights of Celtic Christian history.

Abortion | Crime | Alabama church fires | Abuse | Church life | Catholicism | Parking in D.C. | Politics | Education | Books | Film | Entertainment and media | Missions & ministry | St. Patrick | People | Other stories of interest:

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March (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50