The Christian Century

c. 2013 St. Louis Post-Dispatch

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (RNS) After the city's director of emergency services delivered an opening prayer, the City Council took up some standard issues -- maintenance of a traffic light, filling in a pot hole.

After all three Masses on the weekend of Jan. 19-20, parishioners of St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Springfield, Ill., were handed a statement written by Bishop Thomas Paprocki.

The bishop explained that St. Aloysius' pastor, the Rev. Thomas Donovan, "is suffering from a psychological condition that manifests itself in self-bondage as a response to stress."

c. 2012 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH ST. LOUIS (RNS) In the middle of the 16th century, Catholic bishops and theologians met sporadically in the city of Trento in northern Italy to discuss the church's response to the Reformation. Over the course of 18 years, the Council of Trent produced documents correcting abuses like indulgences and other corruption.

c. 2012 St. Louis Post-Dispatch ST. LOUIS (RNS) Missourians will vote on Tuesday (Aug. 7) on a proposed amendment to the state constitution that supporters say would protect residents' right to pray in public, and if a recent poll is any indication, it could pass by a mammoth margin.

c. 2012 St. Louis Post-Dispatch ST. LOUIS (RNS) Growing up in St. Gabriel the Archangel parish in south St. Louis, Greg Burke was mostly concerned about excursions to the Ted Drewes frozen custard stand.

Over the past 50 years, the practice of thinking theologically in the Roman Catholic Church has slowly shifted from a practical craft to train the next generation of clerics to a wider field of study that employs perspectives from across the scholarly spectrum.

c. 2012 St. Louis Post-Dispatch ST. LOUIS (RNS) When Adil Imdad's 28-year-old cousin died of cancer in Ohio two years ago, the family's grief was compounded by the absence of Muslim ritual following her death. There was no imam nearby to handle the religious customs, no Muslim funeral director to supervise the washing of the body, no Muslim cemetery where the family could lay her to rest.

c. 2012 St. Louis Post-Dispatch (RNS) When the mind that first imagined the Wild Things disappeared for good last week, the children-turned-adults who adored Max and his wild rumpus with big-eyed monsters didn't just mourn the loss of Maurice Sendak; they also grieved for their own ever-fading childhoods.

c. 2012 St. Louis Post-Dispatch ST. LOUIS (RNS) An Illinois bishop has confirmed that a Roman Catholic priest was fired because he "simply would not and could not pray the prayers of the Mass" under a new translation that went into effect last year.