Big news! Pope Benedict XVI has broken the papal record for most mosque visits. With his visit to the Hussein bin-Talal mosque in Amman, Jordan, he bested his predecessor’s record by just one visit—but he also doubled it.

That’s not bad math: the record for mosque visits by a single pontiff, which Benedict XVI now holds, is two.

Here’s John Allen from the independent Catholic newspaper National Catholic Reporter:

Late this morning, Benedict visited the Hussein bin-Talal mosque in the Jordanian capital of Amman. That makes two mosque tours for Benedict XVI, after a visit to the legendary Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, in late 2006. Though John Paul made appearances at many mosques over the years, he only entered one – the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria, in 2001.

Granted, the visit in Amman wasn’t quite the same stunner as Istanbul. For one thing, the symbolism was different; Benedict didn’t share a moment of silent prayer with an imam, and he didn’t take off his shoes. He did both in the Blue Mosque in 2006.

Nonetheless, the pope’s choice to go to the mosque at all, which is named for Jordan’s late King Hussein, offered further confirmation of the rising importance of Islam for this pope and for the broader Catholic church.

Source: National Catholic Reporter 

The Vatican recently launched a YouTube channel so that "[the Catholic Church] is not a stranger to those spaces where numerous young people search for answers and meaning in their lives." So far, the channel includes papal press releases and video excerpts of Holy Mass. If you'd like to watch Pope Benedict VXI announce the Vatican's leap into the Internet age, you'll have to follow the link to YouTube; the embedding codes that allow reposting YouTube videos on other websites have been "disabled by request."

With a notoriously “faith-based” presidential administration in its last throes and a race for the White House boasting a varied slate of Christians—a  man who’s been called a “semi-Baptist,” a Pentecostal conservative, a Catholic Democrat, and a member of the United Church of Christ whom some insist is a “secret Muslim”—it’s surprising that faith and religion aren’t playing a more central role in the presidential and vice-presidential debates.

There’s been a relative lack of religious talk during the presidential face-offs, and various spirituality blogs are wondering if tonight’s will be any different. Both Christianity Today and the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life noted a dearth of religious talk in their liveblogs of last week’s debate, with the notable exception of Tom Brokaw’s zen question. GetReligion also called attention to the fact that the latest presidential debate’s only spiritual reference was to Buddhism, after the website live-blogged the Palin-Biden debate and its own lack of religious language.

One explanation is that Iraq and the tanking economy have largely pushed aside religious and social issues that dominated previous debate cycles. Nathan Empsall at the Wayward Episcopalian is glad the candidates are addressing the economy, but still frustrated by both candidates’ remarks in that regard. With McCain foundering in the polls and in need of a game changer, it’s questionable whether Christianity will make an appearance in tonight’s debate.

Image by Ricardo Carreon, licensed by Creative Commons.

The Roman Catholic tradition of indulgences—when the church cancels divine punishment—is being revived under Pope Benedict XVI. The Catholic News Agency reports that the Pope offered partial or full indulgence to believers for this summer's World Youth Day celebration in Sydney, provided they fulfill particular requirements. For full, or plenary, indulgence, followers must:

devotedly participate at some sacred function or pious exercise taking place during the 23rd World Youth Day, including its solemn conclusion, so that, having received the Sacrament of Reconciliation and being truly repentant, they receive Holy Communion and devoutly pray according to the intentions of His Holiness.

 Seems like a small sacrifice for the opportunity to escape eternal damnation.

This resurgence of indulgences is oddly refreshing for atheist author Christopher Hitchens, writing for Free Inquiry. Benedict is taking Catholicism back to its roots, according to Hitchens, by reasserting its status as the True Faith and lobbying for the reintroduction of obsolete Catholic traditions like the Latin Mass. The mystery and magic of the Church (“ceremony and ritual and a special language for the priesthood”) has been lost in its efforts to gratify the population at large. Hitchens writes: “Nothing is more bogus and unconvincing than the idea of an ‘ecumenical’ Catholicism pretending to make nice with Protestants and Jews and Muslims and sinking the differences that had once been so doctrinally essential.”

Image courtesy of  Paul Resh , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

Strongly held beliefs regarding religion, politics, and sexuality can complicate relationships with loved ones. Those relationships are even more difficult when they involve blood relations, and their beliefs differ markedly from ours.

In a poignant essay for the group website BlogHer, Zoe Gaymo describes her difficult relationship with her father. He is a practicing Catholic, and she is a lesbian. While they get along most of the time, issues have a way of flaring up. “Over the years , I have learned that when my dad gets to talking about religion or politics, I should just let him say what he has to say and not argue with him. ... But every once in a while, he pushes my buttons (the gay ones) and I just can't not say something, which usually ends in me pushing his buttons (the Catholic Church ones).”

The essay illustrates how, even with the best of intentions, parents and their adult offspring can spend their whole lives in a cycle of upsetting disagreement and tenuous reconciliation, never able to find common ground. Gaymo ends her essay resigned, saying: “I know my parents will never change. I just wish they would.”

Image adapted from a photo by Chris Darling, licensed by Creative Commons.

Pope John Paul II coined the term“culture of life,” which refers to Catholic social teaching on the dignity of human life. The teachings are responsible for the hard-to-pin-down politics of orthodox Catholics, with their opposition to abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and war. Later, George W. Bush borrowed the phrase on the campaign stump—a brilliant move that channeled John Paul for Catholic listeners, while evangelicals heard simply “opposition to abortion rights.”

Writing on the Religion Dispatches blog, Tom Davis makes a provocative observation: The dignity of life, however defined, is a higher priority for many Christians than it is in their sacred texts. Both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament actually put greater emphasis on the idea of “loving your neighbor as yourself, what Davis calls a “culture of justice,” rather than the “culture of life.” He offers a reading of the Hebrew Bible story of Tamar and Judah, from which he concludes that using the dignity of life to defend injustice toward women is “a long way from the compassion of scripture.”

Judah and Tamar, school of Rembrandt.