The Bishop of Manchester has condemned a forthcoming exhibition displaying preserved human and animal body parts. The Right Rev Nigel McCulloch described “Body Worlds 4” as a “little show of horrors.” A spokesman for the Museum of Science and Industry, where the exhibition will open on February 22, said they had received the bishop’s email after their press conference as their director was absent the day it arrived but added they were “still open” to discuss the issue with him.
Turkey is to vote tomorrow on an amendent to the constitution that proposes to ease a ban on female university students wearing Islamic headscarves. They have been from campuses since 1997.
Nearly 2,000 members of the Christian People’s Alliance have written a petition to Sheffield City Council, protesting against government plans which will allow a child to be placed with gay couple regardless of the wishes of birth parents. “People in Sheffield have a right to say if they were killed in an accident and their children had to be adopted, then their children should go to a father and mother,” said a former city concillor. A local homosexual couple with two adopted children claimed the petition was “about homophobic issues” and was “making adoption political.”
The Church of England has launched a Lenten scheme to encourage Christians to be good neighbours. Love Life Live Lent suggests daily Lenten actions via booklets, text messages and messages on social networking sites including Facebook, MySpace and the photo-sharing website Flickr.
By texting “Papst”, the German word for Pope, to a phone service run by the Catholic Church, Austrian Catholics can receive a daily soundbite taken from Pope Benedict’s sermons during his visit last September to Austria. “We hope via this creative and discreet mode of communication to reach younger people,” a Church spokesman said.
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Prayer nourishes hope “even in the solitude of the most difficult trials,” Pope Benedict said this week at a Mass marking the start of Lent on Wednesday.
The notion of heaven as a place full of fluffy clouds, and angels is false, according to the Bishop of Durham. The Right Rev Tom Wright explains: “St Paul is very clear that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead already, but that nobody else has yet.The New Testament says that when Christ does return, the dead will experience a whole new life: not just our soul, but our bodies . . . At no point do the resurrection narratives say, ’ Jesus has been raised, therefore we are all going to heaven. ’ It says that Christ is coming here, to join together the heavens and the Earth in an act of new creation. ”
Bishop Hieronymous of Thebes has been made head of the Orthodox Church of Greece. “In whichever position the church appoints us, no matter how high, we must know that our leader is Christ,” said the new leader, who has been described as an “enlightened conservative.” “He doesn’t advocate the Middle Ages but he is also not a rebel,” said Giorgos Moustakis, a theology professor.
The Rev Canon Robert Paterson has been appointed the bishop of Sodor and Man, the smallest diocese of the Church of England. Father Paterson, who is at present chaplain to the Archbishop of York, will be consecrated bishop after Easter.