Meanwhile in Brazil...

It might be difficult to top this one (filed under the annals of religious fanaticism)...

From here: Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. "God's laws," said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church. "They took the life of an innocent," Sobrinho told TIME in a telephone interview. "Abortion is much more serious than killing an adult. An adult may or may not be an innocent, but an unborn child is most definitely innocent. Taking that life cannot be ignored."

Friday Quotable

“Who are we as men to say that we are called by God to the ministry of priesthood, but women are not? That our call is valid, but theirs is not? We profess as Catholics that the invitation to the priesthood comes from God, and it seems to me that we are tampering with the sacred.” - Rev. Roy Bourgeois.

Rev. Roy Bourgeois, 69 is a Roman Catholic priest whom the Vatican is considering excommunicating next week for participating in a ceremony it considers illicit and invalid: the ordination of a woman as a priest.

Andres Serrano, 'Heaven and Hell', 1984, Cibachrome Photograph, 27.5" X 40" (ripped from the Artnet site)