Catholic legal scholar Nicholas Cafardi, who recently endorsed Senator Barack Obama for president, has resigned as a trustee of Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, an outpost of conservative Catholicism.
An expert in civil and canon law, Cafardi said he quit the school’s board voluntarily.
Four students at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon, confessed to hanging an effigy of Senator Barack Obama from a tree on campus and were suspended for up to a year, school officials announced September 30. The students’ names were not released. Other sanctions include community service and multicultural education, which must be completed before the students can return to campus, said Brad Lau, vice president of student life.
People looking for signs of theological sanity in this land can take heart from the fact that only 33 pastors endorsed a presidential candidate as part of a “pulpit freedom” demonstration on September 28. The event was conceived by the Alliance Defense Fund to challenge Internal Revenue Service guidelines that prohibit tax-exempt religious organizations from engaging in direct political campaigning.