Religion News Service, Author at Crux

Catholic farmer ousted from Michigan market over same-sex marriage views
- Church in the US, Religion News Service
- June 2, 2017
After posting a Facebook post saying that according to his Catholic belief “marriage is a sacramental union between one man and one woman,” a farmer in Michigan was barred from a municipal farmers’ market. The farmer is suing the city of East Lansing, Michigan, seeking his reinstatement.
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82 kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls swapped for prisoners
- Global Church, Religion News Service
- May 9, 2017
The kidnapping of the Chibok girls in Nigeria is one of the high-profile incidents of Boko Haram’s insurgency, now in its eighth year and with little sign of ending. About 220 were abducted from their school in a nighttime attack. Now, 82 of the girls have been returned in a deal brokered by Switzerland and the Red Cross.
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Two key takeaways from the pope’s TED talk
- Commentary, Religion News Service
- May 2, 2017
Theologian Massimo Faggioli said the message Pope Francis delivered in a recent TED Talk was focused on the Catholic social teaching of the “common good.” In recent times, many Catholic politicians, economists and businessmen have embraced a view of the economy that is dogmatic about the sovereignty of the free market. But this is not the Catholic view of the economy as it was articulated by all popes, at least from Leo XIII’s encyclical “Rerum Novarum” (1891) until today.
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America’s real first freedom? Secular government

The men who wrote the U.S. Constitution understood well that the greatest threat to freedom of conscience — of thought, belief, religion, and expression — was tyranny and, in their time, tyranny was predominantly religious in nature. So when the U.S. founders had the opportunity to forge a legal framework for a new nation, they inscribed as the first freedom the right to live free from the government’s heavy hand in the area of religion.

Archbishop of Canterbury to express remorse over Reformation violence

Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, is expected to issue a statement apologizing for the violence that followed the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago, according to news accounts. The apology will urge believers to ask forgiveness for past atrocities and hopefully usher in a new era in Catholic and Protestant relations.