Just a few notes about some news stories that caught my eye because they specifically mentioned my faith:

Catholic Pharmacist Fired

A federal judge has supported Wal-Mart for firing a Catholic pharmacist who refused to fill prescriptions for birth control:

(Judge John) Shabaz said Wal-Mart and Medical Staffing Network accommodated (Pharmacist Neil) Noesen's religious opposition to contraception by having other pharmacists fill prescriptions. But he said Noesen went too far by putting customers who called about birth control on hold indefinitely and refusing to get service for those who showed up in person without notifying other pharmacists.

Noesen's firing was justified because he was disruptive and failed to meet Wal-Mart's expectations, the judge wrote in his 12-page ruling.

This is a tough one for me. I share the pharmacist's religious beliefs about birth control. So I sympathize with Mr. Noesen. Nonetheless, he took a job where he just had to know that he'd be expected to act in opposition to his religious beliefs. My gut reaction: It sounds like Wal-Mart went out of their way to help the guy observe his beliefs, but they just couldn’t make it work. I hope he's able to find a job where he can use his training in a way that's consistent with the religious beliefs that I share with him.

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Nicole Kidman Is Catholic?

Wow. I never knew that. It might explain why she wasn't able to make things work with Tom "Scientology" Cruise. Nicole is now engaged to marry the country singer Keith Urban, and apparently wants to return to her religious roots as well... at least, according to this story:

"For Nicole, you know this is a spiritual homecoming, coming back to the church and her faith in her old parish," said Jesuit Father Paul Coleman, a longtime friend of the Kidman family who advised them on the annulment of Kidman's marriage with Tom Cruise.

Father Coleman is chaplain at Mary Mackillop Chapel in North Sydney, one of two Jesuit-run parishes in the Sydney Archdiocese. In January, Kidman mentioned the chapel as a possible wedding venue. The Kidman family lives nearby, and the parish is where Nicole and her sister, Antonia, went to school. Kidman, accompanied by her parents, Anthony and Janelle, attended Good Friday and Easter Sunday services there.

Alright. Well, I think Nicole Kidman has done some good work in some good movies... and I think Keith Urban is a really annoying pseudo-country singer... and I wish them both the best.

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Randall Terry, Catholic Convert

The founder of Operation Rescue has apparently come home to the Mother Church:

Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, left his evangelical moorings and quietly joined the Roman Catholic Church. Now a Republican candidate for the Florida Senate, Mr. Terry heads an entity known as the Society for Truth and Justice.

In a delayed disclosure, he told the National Catholic Register he was finally able to surmount the "theological hurdles" of papal infallibility, Marian dogma, and purgatory. He was confirmed in the faith by a long-time priest friend during Easter week at a church in Binghamton, N.Y.

Mr. Terry, 46, founded Operation Rescue in 1987 and led it for its first seven years. He was arrested more than 40 times during civil-disobedience protests at abortion centers, and served jail sentences. Lawsuits stemming from those protests forced him into bankruptcy in 1998.

I share Mr. Terry's opposition to abortion, although there have been times that he's said things that rubbed me the wrong way. I agree with him that abortion is wrong and that life is sacred, but I haven't always agreed with his methods. Still, it's better to do something to try to get folks to wake up to the horror of abortion than to do nothing at all. That's not the point, though. The point is, Randall Terry has come home. Welcome home, Randall.

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The LA Times Bashes Benedict And Picks Open Old Wounds

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen wrote the following about Pope Benedict's recent visit to Auschwitz in an LA times editorial:

Benedict's historical fabrication to Christianize the Holocaust is ... a moral scandal because it obscures the troubling truth about the Catholic Church: Its churches across Europe tacitly and actively participated in the Jews' persecution. Pope Pius XII, the German bishops, French bishops, Polish church leaders and many others, animated by anti-Semitism, supported or called for the persecution of the Jews (though not their slaughter). Some, such as Slovakian church leaders and Croatian priests, actively endorsed or participated in the mass murder.

Since Vatican II, the church has forcefully condemned anti-Semitism, even declaring it a sin. Yet Benedict stood in Auschwitz negligently silent.

Benedict has shown much goodwill in continuing to improve the church's relations with Jews today. But with his whitewashing of the past — exonerating both the German perpetrators and the church, universalizing the Holocaust and deemphasizing its purely anti-Jewish thrust — he turns the clock back on what the Catholic Church had, in the decade before his papacy, been acknowledging: that the church must confront the anti-Semitism of its past, that many Catholics participated in the Jews' persecution; that the church should have aided the assaulted people more.

Oh, Lord, where do I begin.

First of all, there is ample evidence to exonerate Pope Pius of complicity in the Holocaust. But some people have decided that Pius is, was, and will remain a Holocaust villain in their eyes, regardless of the facts. Nothing will change their minds. Oh, well.

Secondly, It seems evident to me that, to people like Goldhagen, any real reconciliation between Christendom and Judaism would actually be counter to his goals. People like Goldhagen and his ilk make their living by creating and maintaining divisiveness and conflict. There's nothing much we can do to change that either.

Look, I don't propose to speak for all Christians... but I can speak for myself and I feel somewhat comfortable speaking for the Christians in my family and the Christians I know. Here's the thing: We have tremendous respect and love for Judiasm and the Jewish people. We see them as our Older Brothers in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Yes, the Holocaust was a terrible thing and it should never have happened. Yes, surely there was more that Christendom could have done to stop it. But rather than focus on the past, can't we try to heal those wounds and try to be more united instead of further apart? After all, there is a new Holocaust going on in the world right now... Maybe we should pay a little more attention to the present.

Just remember to get all of the facts when you read something as hateful and venomous as Goldhagen's editorial.