Now here is one of those matches that seems to have been made in new media heaven. The New York Daily News notes:
Shameless plug for our friends?
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Buddhists, Jews and orgasms
If you’re one of those rare individuals who is interested in the topic of sex, you may enjoy Patricia Leigh Brown and Carol Pogash’s story in the Sunday New York Times about a co-ed live-in commune dedicated to the female orgasm.
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Time for the never-ssenes?
For those of you who haven’t had the experience of attending a mainline seminary or studying the Bible in an academic institution, the Essenes are almost as much a matter of contemporary Biblical orthodoxy as the historical-critical method.
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To whom did he pray?
A reader noted a brief bit in an Associated Press story about the Alabama man who killed 10 people and himself in a violent rampage last week.
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Better uses for blogs
Boston Globe religion reporter Michael Paulson has been covering an interesting story. The local Catholic hospital chain and a secular insurance company are forming a joint venture. Cardinal O’Malley supports the move but many critics are concerned about whether the arrangement will entangle the church with abortion. For his latest, he surveyed moral theologians:
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The real Big controversy
I just finished watching this season’s second to last episode of HBO’s Big Love soap opera, and I believe there may be another hidden reason that the show makes Mormons uneasy. Much of the media’s attention has been on the fact that this episode portrayed a scene in a Mormon temple, however, the show did have one line that caught me: the main character expressly claimed that the Mormon church was just as corrupt as the show’s main antagonists who are practicing polygamy and generally in trouble with the law.
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Out of sorrow, a new unity?
It hardly seems nine years since Roman Catholics and Protestant foes vowed to co-exist peacably with one another in the 1998 Good Friday agreement. Last week’s killing of a Catholic policeman and two British soldiers (two splinter I.R. A group’s claimed responsibility for the killings) could have threatened that peace.
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Irony in the Big apology
There is some real irony in this week’s apology from HBO regarding their anticipated controversial portrayal of a Mormon temple’s “sacred endowment ceremony” in the amazingly entertaining and insightful Sunday night soap opera Big Love. The show, which features a Utah polygamous family dealing with the challenges if interacting with both the secular world and with their fundamentalist roots, is genuinely known for portraying conservative religious beliefs quite sympathetically. Some would even say that it is (arguably) “one of the most sympathetic portraits” of such beliefs.
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Because science is important
There was one part of a Rasmussen poll about President Barack Obama’s decision to expand stem cell research that destroys embryos that I found particularly interesting:
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