Odd Spot

Go ahead, give up chocolate for Lent

Thursday, March 10th, 2022

The moral of this story? If someone asks you what you’re giving up for Lent, run away! Or, an even better moral: When you’re deciding what to do for Lent, be childlike, not childish. Read more

Lost in translation

Monday, March 7th, 2022

  The funeral of Cardinal Agostino Cacciavillan will take place on Monday 7 March 2022 at the Altar of the Chair of St Peter’s Basilica, announced the Vatican on 5 March. “The Cardinals, the Archbishops and Bishops who wish to concelebrate and want to be at 10.30 in the sacristy of St Peter’s Basilica to Read more

Baptism-Gate: the strange case of a misplaced pronoun

Thursday, March 3rd, 2022

Everyone from The New York Times and USA Today to National Public Radio and local news outlets covered the story. A priest has performed thousands of baptisms incorrectly over more than 20 years because he used the wrong pronoun. The coverage was largely one-sided and inaccurate. It appeared to be driven by an agenda rather Read more

Pray yourself thin

Monday, February 28th, 2022

Gwen Shamblin believed people could pray themselves thin. In 1999 she launched Remnant Fellowship, based on her diet teachings. Last year she and her husband, former Tarzan actor Joe Lara, as well as five other leaders within Remnant Fellowship, died in a plane crash. Now a docuseries, The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult Read more

Pope Francis spotted in a record shop

Thursday, February 24th, 2022

Pope Francis, a lover of classical music, slipped out of the Vatican last month to visit old friends who run a Rome record shop and came away with a gift of a CD. Martinez-Brocal told Reuters the shop’s owners told him that they had become friends with the pope years ago when he was Cardinal Read more

Building an ice chapel an opportunity for fellowship and faith sharing.

Monday, February 21st, 2022

When winter regularly throws you more than 200 inches of snow, make an ice chapel. That was the decision of a group of students at a northern Michigan engineering school back in 2016. Following the success of the first ice chapel, each subsequent iteration included more embellishment. An altar was made from ice cut from Read more

Claims that Golliwogs sales helping keep girls out of prostitution

Monday, February 14th, 2022

The owner of a North Otago gift shop promoting golliwogs, or gollys as she likes to call them, says the dolls are not racist and sales help keep the Sri Lankan girls, who make them, out of prostitution. Read more

Laughing Jesus pictures are cringe

Thursday, February 10th, 2022

There are hundreds of versions of Laughing Jesus posted on the internet. Jim McDermott says they make him feel deeply uncomfortable. He likes the term cringe to describe them because of the way it captures the intense awkwardness of some of our efforts as a church to seem hip and relevant. “Laughing Jesus might as Read more

Sinning in the Rain: crimes go up when it rains on Sunday

Thursday, December 9th, 2021

A forthcoming study from the Review of Economics and Statistics called Sinning in the Rain, found that the more it rains on Sunday mornings, the more white-collar, drug – and alcohol-related crimes there are. More rain means fewer people go to church, said the study’s author, Jonathan Moreno-Medina, assistant professor of economics at the University Read more

Horses helped to spread Christianity before Christ

Monday, December 6th, 2021

The invention of bit and bridle made it easier to control horses.  This invention was one of the factors that led to the rise of mega-empires and of world religions like Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam during the first millennium BCE”, according to a recent study. Before the Current Era (BCE) is the secular version of Read more