Underbelly

The next leader of the free world thinks he knows the secret :  “Give me a country in 1600 that had a Protestant  led contest for ... pow...

Four hundred languages ?   Then I suppose it is true to say that  the new Bible app revolutionizes Biblical scholarship.  But is it also tr...

I'm finishing up John Thavis' Vatican Diaries and I think I'll file it under "modified rapture."  Thavis is an accom...

A faithful commentator doesn't know what to make of my last crack (i,.e., lifted from The Economist ) about atheism. Oh, I wouldn...

... religious strictures, many of which involve compiling lists of what is forbidden and dreaming up creatively horrendous punishments fo...

(Cough, cough) Underbelly March 9: I Think I'll Take a Flutter on the Argentines   Link.   Although I admit, there is probably som...

Intrade may be gone but there's still plenty of room for punter action on the Papacy.  John points us to Paddypower   where Richard Da...

-- either one --but why, you ask?  Easy: they're both "Italian Argentines;" so, the best way to reclaim the papacy for the mo...

Well here's an aww moment: Ital y 's C hief Bad B oy Silvio Berlusconi has been convicted of somethingorother.  The staff and mana...

No no, bear with me here.  I'm not accusing the President of covering up child abuse, n: Ior the Pope of droning American citizens in t...

You know the story:   She sees the shoes in the shop window.  She puts on the shoes ; she begins to dance.  She dances with every man at...

Non habemas pap a m: Fratres carissimi Non solum propter tres canonizationes ad hoc Consistorium vos convocavi, sed etiam ut vobis decisi...

The Pope's Twitter handle is Pontifex . UB 's Wichita Bureau claims that he has copped PontifexUS .  Evidently somebody else nicked...

W. H. Auden, who thought himself a Christian, claims one warm June evening in 1933 to have been sitting with three colleagues--fellow teac...

I mentioned a while back that I was curious about the roots of Islam and in particular, how the new learning, ahem, nuances the old.  Brad ...

All right Mr. Smarty Pants, you think you know all the answers--here's one for you. It's about temples, specifically Greek temples,...

Back in the midwest, when people asked me my religion I used to sy "listless nonbeliever." This worked in the respect that they t...

Here's a tantalizing little amateur trial balloon: the good folks over at American Interest are taking a flutter at the notion that ther...

American nuns come out swinging against Vatican  in face of ‘radical feminist’ accusations Question, how much of this is just about ...

Kevin Drum wades into what is, for him, untypical territory.  He asks: did Jesus exist?  And he answers: yeh, I guess so, but I don't r...