Mother Jones reports that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has no comment on Rush Limbaugh's red-baiting of Pope Francis.

Addicting Info reports that The Satanic Temple wants to erect a monument honoring Satan on the grounds of the Oklahoma state capitol -- right next to the one honoring the 10 Commandments.  

Eyes Right has a backgrounder on the recent murder conviction of parents following the methods of No Greater Joy Ministries founded by Michael and Debi Pearl.

Associated Baptist Press reports that the trustees of Brewton-Parker College in Mount Vernon Georgia have picked fake ex-Muslim terrorist Ergun Caner as president.  ABP's Bob Allen writes:  

Controversy arose in 2010, when bloggers questioned written descriptions of Caner's academic credentials and apparent embellishments in recorded versions of his "Jihad to Jesus" testimony popular with evangelical audiences in the aftermath of 9/11.

"Jesus strapped a cross on his back so I wouldn't have to strap a bomb on mine," Caner said in a sermon at the Southern Baptist Convention pastors' conference in 2004. He preached in high-profile pulpits including First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla., and Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, claiming he came to America to do what the 9/11 terrorists did before being saved from a martyr's death by accepting Christ.

Last night, it was difficult to cut through the fog of reaction from current day conservatives to the death of Nelson Mandela. However, despite the kind words and the tributes, it should never be forgotten that the conservative movement in this country took great pains to condemn and demonize Mandela and the African National Congress, doing all they could to undermine the economic boycott of South Africa and the anti-apartheid movement.

Nelson Mandela and his comrades with the African National Congress were not always the toast of the town, especially in Washington, D.C.

President Ronald Reagan, who placed the ANC on the U.S. terror list in the 1980s (a designation that wasn't removed until 2008), labeled the Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 as "immoral" and "utterly repugnant."

Yesterday Fox News and Glenn Beck's website "The Blaze" reported that a public school in Bulloch County, Ga., had banned Christmas cards. According to the Beck site, this was done because earlier this year Americans United had demanded that the school order teachers to "curtail religious expression while teaching."

The story was soon appearing on right-wing blogs and making a splash on social media. There was a big problem with it, however: It wasn't true.

Paul Crouch, once one of the most powerful men in the world of televangelism, has died at 79 after a ten-year battle with degenerative heart disease. Crouch, co-founder of the Trinity Broadcasting Network (http://www.tbn.org) with his wife Janice, was a master at pitching the "prosperity gospel," and prosperity surely came his way. Crouch and Janice had "matching his-and-her mansions in Newport Beach, Calif., and used multimillion dollar corporate jets," entertainment.time.com pointed out.

Crouch's wealth not only grew out of the power of his own preaching and fundraising solicitations, it also came from selling time on his network to many of the world's best known preachers. And, the Crouches were ultimate survivors, having, as Religion Dispatches' Sarah Posner recently pointed out, "survived many a media exposé."  

Pope Francis has given progressives, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, a lot to cheer about with his public deemphasis on so-called culture war issues (a term he has never used, btw), his focus on the needs of the poor, and his powerful critique of the excesses of capitalism.  And he has certainly upset American Catholic conservatives who have been heavily invested in various combinations of ritual traditionalism, boosterism of various forms of free market capitalism; little to no record of concern for the poor beyond charity or for the interests of working people; and of course, "obsession" with abortion, contraception and homosexuality.  

But the fact remains that the course of the American Church has been set for decades thanks to the previous two Popes who have appointed nearly all of the American bishops and who have aggressively squelched dissent. As Frank Cocozzelli has pointed out, how many and what kinds of bishops the 76 year old Francis will get to appoint in the U.S. may be where the rubber meets the road of his papal legacy.

Time will tell whether Francis's statement on economics will have much impact beyond the current frisson of media interest and liberal encouragement.  But it is worth noting, for example, that Pope John Paul II issued a strong encyclical on labor and Benedict was a strong opponent of the U.S. war in Iraq. But there was little to show for their statements. The power and influence of popes and presidents is almost always greatly exaggerated, as we all tend to project our greatest hopes and worst fears onto leaders of all kinds.    

In the meantime, there is little evidence of Pope Francis having any actual impact on American politics or American Catholicism, and certainly not the culture war or the American bishops' alliance with Protestant Christian Right leaders. At least not yet.  So it is wise to be wary of the media hype of a celebrity religious leader on the other side of the world who has been in office less than a year.

This post is reworked from one I wrote during last year's presidential election campaign entitled, Is Redistribution Marxism? No, Just Good Catholic Doctrine!.  In light of Rush Limbaugh and Fox Business News host Stuart Varney's strong suggestions that Pope Francis is espousing "Marxism" let's once again set the record straight. - FLC

Rush Limbaugh and Stuart Varney seem to be confused and perplexed by Pope Francis's recently encyclical, Evangelii Gadium (Joy of the Gospel). Perhaps the term "threatened" is a more accurate description. They have accused the pope of advocating Marxism in place of capitalism.

Jack Hunter, the racist former aide to both Ron and Rand Paul, now says he wasn't really a racist. He just played one on the radio. Dude's gotta make a living, you see. He claims too, that Ron Paul was shocked, shocked, to learn that the newsletters that were published under his name were filled with racist material for years and years.  Suffice to say, there is much self-serving, revisionist material in Hunter's Politico article, which comes at a time when Rand Paul is actively testing the waters for a presidential run, and Ron Paul is busy building his new career as, among other things a homeschooling text book entrepreneur.

But I want to highlight just one point out of Hunter's rich stew of attempted political redemption.  

It is no secret that Richard Doerflinger - and by extension, his former boss, until recently the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Cardinal Timothy Dolan -- have been building bridges to the farther reaches of movement conservatism. Doerflinger went so far as to exhort Tea Party Republicans to engage in their recent shutdown of the federal government.

A blog post by Lisa Webster co-editor of Religion Dispatches raises an interesting question. She wonders if The New York Times is dumbing down religion reporting. Webster will be writing a series about the debate on the point between Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic and anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann an op-ed contributor to the Times. I look forward to it.  Meanwhile, I was reminded of a one of Luhrmann's Times op-eds from the run-up to the election last year. My response, slightly revised, is reprised below.  This post was first published as Why Can't Secular Liberals be More Like Rick Santorum?  on May 28, 2012. -- FC

Why can't secular liberals be more like evangelicals? That 's the question posed by Stanford anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann in a 2012 op-ed in The New York Times.  She thinks that some evangelicals might find Democratic candidates more attractive if, well, they were more like evangelicals.  But her idea strikes me as the political equivalent of the immortal words of Professor Henry Higgins, in My Fair Lady, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?"  

Happily, Professor Higgins overcomes his perplexity before the show is over.  But bafflement over why another cannot be more like oneself, especially when it comes to politics and religion, continues to bedevil the American experiment in democracy and its most original feature - religious equality under the law and a culture of religious pluralism.  One tiresome trope that interferes with our national conversation on these matters is on vivid display in Professor Luhrmann's essay.

We may never know the full story of the marital infidelity of Doug Phillips, a San Antonio, Texas-based, theocratic homeschooling entrepreneur of national significance.  But one thing is clear: The ripple effects of his disgrace and the dissolution of his Vision Forum ministry will be felt for years to come.  This is because his worldview hinges on the absolute integrity of the marriage bond and in this way he sought to model a vision of contemporary Biblical patriarchy. But the model he has now offered to the world is what the late Calvinist theologian R.J. Rushdoony would have called "treason" against the God-ordained institution of the traditional family.  

It is not clear how closely Doug Phillips adheres to Rushdoony's notions of Biblical Law.  Suffice to say that Rushdoony and his followers assert that the laws of Old Testament Israel are applicable today -- and that adultery was a capital offense.  While not everyone in the Christian Reconstructionist orbit embraces the list of biblical capital offenses, and adultery is not a crime let alone a capital crime in the U.S., the gravity of this offense against Phillips's own view of the family is nevertheless profound.  

I originally posted this in March of this year. Since NBC has taken no action, no effort to disclose Weigel's neo-conservative background. Beyond that, he is clearly out of step with the with the new tone being set by Pope Francis. Hence, the piece bears repeating.

George Weigel, who has frequently appeared on the NBC Nightly News as a "Vatican analyst" in the run up to the Conclave of Cardinals that will select the next pope, has served as a  consultant on Catholic issues to NBC since 1999.  But what NBC does not tell us -- is that Weigel is no ordinary expert.  He is one of the leaders of today's Catholic Right.

I was glad to see that 60 Minutes admitted that their source for what happened during the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya is not credible and retracted their story.   Perhaps uncoincidentally their source was the author of a memoir on the subject, The Embassy House: The Explosive Eyewitness Account of the Libyan Embassy Siege by the Soldier Who Was There,’’ published by Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon and Schuster which in turn is owned by CBS. (60 Minutes failed to disclose this conflict of interest during the broadcast.)  The editor-in-chief of Threshold, which specializes in conservative and Republican books, is the former GOP strategist, Mary Matalin. Threshold authors include Glenn Beck, Herman Cain, Dick Cheney, Jerome Corsi, Sean Hannity, Stephen Moore and Karl Rove.   Simon and Schuster has recalled the book from stores and suspended publication in the wake of the scandal.  

This episode reminds me of another time when 60 Minutes got a story radically wrong, apparently relying on a conservative activist group as their primary source. The segment was part of the roll out of a new agency of the Religious Right in the Reagan era, the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD).