Religion round-up

An all-religion post. Just happened that way.

The House stuck into the military appropriations bill a provision allowing military chaplains to talk about Jesus during official ceremonies at which attendance is mandatory (nothing now stops them doing so at voluntary events).

The Catholic Church’s leading spokesman on film says that if you have a child on 6/6/06, it is okay to name it Damien. Maybe a little less okay if it’s a girl.

For the duration of Pope Benny’s visit to Poland in two weeks, Polish state tv will not run ads for booze, contraceptives, lingerie... or sanitary pads.

An AFP story yesterday that seems not to have been picked up in the US, the Iraqi government will now essentially license imams in the Baghdad region. Here’s the paragraph I like:

“We reached an agreement that the imams of mosques must be nominated by the Shia and Sunni Waqfs because we have discovered that some imams are impostors who should not be in charge,” said interior ministry commando chief Major General Mehdi Musabah.

Because if anyone has the moral and religious authority to say which imams are legitimate, it’s the interior ministry commando chief.

There was also an agreement that Iraqi forces will not raid mosques in Baghdad without the presence of American soldiers. This was an agreement between the Shiite and Sunni authorities and the interior ministry: the US was only informed later of its new mosque-raiding role. Evidently they’d rather have foreign infidels kicking in the doors of their mosques than Iraqi Muslims. Says Musabah, “It is forbidden to shout [Allahu Akbar] when security forces pass by, unless it is being raided without American forces.”