Ireland announced on Thursday that is was closing its embassy at the Vatican – headquarters of the Catholic Church – due to economic reasons. However some believe it was the result of strained relations between the majority Catholic Ireland and the Church over a bad report about the handling of child abuse cases involving the Church.
While checking out the Sunday “papers” I came across some stories about church and state. Including the Vatican’s dirty secret and it isn’t The Da Vinci Code, The judge in the Dover PA court case talks about the founders true intent with religion and the state, a new book is coming out focusing on the Christian rights attempt for extra special unconstitutional treatment from our government, an Iranian dissident talks about how good we have it in the states by having separation of church and state, and a story about another poor use of tax money for an abstinence-only sex education program in South Carolina.
It seems that when the majority religious sects have a government policy go against them and their religion – they make a legal claim demanding separation of church and state. They never ask for it when a policy – say the Faith Based Initiative – supports them or gives them an advantage – like government funding.
Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into “fundamentalism” if it ignores scientific reason.
Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project STOQ, or Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, reaffirmed John Paul’s 1996 statement that evolution was “more than just a hypothesis.”