After two years of nonstop political campaigning, the 2008 Presidential election has finally come to an end. Whether or not our favorite candidates won, I think we can all say that we are ready for a break from it all (although in our state of Georgia we still have to vote one more time in a run-off for U.S. Senate).  In any case, it will all fire-up again in about two years.  Candidates, some old and some new, will jockey for positions in the long, seemingly endless, quests for their party’s nomination for the Presidency, Senate, House, and numerous other political offices.

According to an article published by the Catholic News Service, the Vatican has ruled that the word Yahweh “must not ‘be used or pronounced’ in songs and prayers during Catholic Masses.”The new directive was revealed to U.S. bishops in a letter from Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli, chairman of the U.S. bishop’s Committee on Divine Worship.According to Bishop Serratelli, the Vatican directive would provide "an opportunity to offer catechesis for the faithful as an encouragement to show reverence for the name of God in daily life, emphasizing the power of language as an act of devotion and worship."

Evangelical Christians are naïve, unintelligent, easily led, irrational, anti-scientific, and intolerant, right? If you read some comments on the secular blogs and articles in the mass media you would sure think so.

On September 6, 2008, the Fox News website carried an article about a 17-year-old Pakistani girl who was murdered after successfully getting her marriage annulled in court. It seems that she was forced to marry a 45-year-old man when she was only nine. According to reports, she was murdered in an honor killing by men sent by her parents.

The first U.S. Presidential election I can remember was 1960 when Richard Nixon ran against John F. Kennedy (yes… I am that old). One major issue of that campaign was the question of Kennedy’s religion. He was a Roman Catholic at a time when no Roman Catholic had ever been elected President. A Catholic named Al Smith ran in 1928 but lost to Herbert Hoover (Smith may have been gratified given Hoover’s unfortunate fate in the Great Depression). Nonetheless, some people in 1960, as they had in 1928, feared a Catholic President would not be sufficiently independent from the Vatican’s influence (no one thought it odd that Nixon was a non-pacifist Quaker). Unlike Smith, Kennedy overrode that fear and was narrowly elected