Before local dentist Max Feinberg died, he put in his will that he would disinherit any heirs who married gentiles. Or as the Wall Street Journal oh-so-tactfully puts it, "Marry Goyim, You Get Bupkis." Now an Illinois appeals court has essentially revoked that clause from Feinberg's will, saying it "seriously interferes with and limits the right of individuals to marry a person of their own choosing." [WSJ, Trib]......

A new study published in the Chicago-based Archives of Surgery says that 57.4 percent of the general public and 19.5 percent of medical professionals "believe that divine intervention could save a person when physicians believe treatment is futile." [AP]......

Yesterday, hundreds lined the streets of Chinatown and Bridgeport for the 88th procession of the Order of St. Rocco di Simbario. The order, founded in the late 1920s by Bruno Bertucci, was named in honor of St. Rocco, the Catholic Patron Saint of Pestilence. We were shocked the first time we saw the procession in all its pomp nine years ago. The procession winds through the neighborhood, led by enough fireworks to make Venetian Night......

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago announced today that it will pay $12.7 million to settle a suit against 11 priests brought by 16 victims of sexual abuse. Over the last 30 years, the Archdiocese of Chicago has settled 250 such suits. [S-T, Trib]......

Father Carl Morello, the priest at St. Paul of the Cross in Park Ridge, recently suggested turning the school's gymnasium into shelter on Sunday nights, from October through April, as part of the PADS ("public action to deliver shelter") program, a network of faith-based shelters throughout Cook County. And his plan hasn't gone over so well. ...Parents like Paul Chevlin, an assistant state's attorney, don't like the idea of running a shelter so close to......

Abal Zaidi, 31, was a corrections officer for the Kane County Sheriff's Department. He's also an observant Muslim, which he says requires him to have a beard. In December 2006, Sheriff Pat Perez announced that all officers had to be clean-shaven; Zaidi asked for an exception, and he says two days later, he was asked to resign. Zaidi filed a religious discrimination suit, seeking unspecified damages and an apology. According to the U.S. Equal Employment......

Part two of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life's study on American religion is out now. (We talked about part one in February.) In Illinois: 70 percent believe in God with absolute certainty 3 percent don't believe in God at all 53 percent say religion is very important in their lives 39 percent attend religious services at least once a week 55 percent pray at least once a day, and 27 percent......

Rev. Michael Pfleger apologized this weekend for his comments about Hillary Clinton and promised to refrain from specific political discussions for the rest of the campaign. He also said the last few days were "the most painful" of his life. From his "statement of apology": I apologize for words that I chose. I apologize for my dramatization that was for many who do not know me, simply typical dramatics I often use in sermons. I......

Rev. Michael Pfleger is coming under fire today for comments he made about Hillary Clinton while guest-preaching at Trinity United Church of Christ. Pfleger, a Catholic priest at St. Sabina's on the South Side, is a "long-time friend" of Obama's, according to both the Trib and the Sun-Times. Pfleger recently stepped down from Obama's Catholic advisory council and from the Catholics for Obama committee. The Clinton campaign said Pfleger's remarks are "divisive and hateful,"......

State Rep Monique Davis (D-27) went on an outrageously intolerant tirade against atheism activist Rob Sherman in the Illinois house last week. I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy -- it’s tragic-- when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer......

The protesters who interrupted the Easter mass at Holy Name church yesterday were in court this morning and held in lieu of $25,000 bail for five of them and $35,000 for one with a record. They all face two counts of felony criminal damage to property and two counts of simple battery for allegedly squirting fake blood on parishioners. Donte D. Smith, Ephran Ramirez, Jr., Ryane J. Ziemba, Mercedes Phinaih, Regan Maher and Angela Haban......

Photo by The New No.2 Governor Blagojevich promised $1 million to help rebuild Pilgrim Baptist Church after it burned down in 2006. But church officials say they haven't seen a dime, and even Blago's office admits the money went to an unrelated school that rented space from the church. They were sticking with that story until other local politicians jumped in to call Blago a liar and an opportunist, at which point our governor......

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a new study about American religiosity yesterday, and the study says the religious landscape of America is "diverse and incredibly fluid." A lot of oeople are changing religious affiliations, and more are choosing no affiliation at all than ever before. The study found that 16.1 percent of adult Americans characterized themselves as "unaffiliated." Illinois's religious composition, compared to that of the nation on the whole (see......

The South Side Irish St. Patrick's Day parade will be held a week earlier than usual this year. Typically, the parade is held the Sunday before March 17, but this year, that's Palm Sunday, a major day on the Catholic calendar. So parade organizers moved the festivities up to March 9 to avoid any conflicts. We're not sure how much local St. Patrick's revelry will actually be affected by the Catholic calendar, since the ways......

Yesterday's worldwide Scientology protests had a local presence outside the church's center on Lincoln.......

In the continuing soap opera that is our state's budget crisis, Governor Rod Blagojevich made a visit to Rev. James Meeks's south side mega-church, House of Hope Sunday to drum up support for his proposal of free rides for seniors on the region's mass transit system. Besides being pastor of the church, Meeks is also an Illinois State Senator, and is often allied with the governor. In remarks to the congregation of about 8,000, Blagojevich......

More bad news for and from the Sun-Times: business editor Dan Miller, a 2006 inductee into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame, resigned today as seven non-union employees were laid off, including editorial board members Michelle Stevens, Lloyd Sachs and Michael Gillis, and Assistant Managing Editor Avis Weathersbee. Miller wrote in an email that he thinks the Sun-Times will be sold in a matter of months. [Crain's, Trib] You can own a piece of......

Not sure how we missed Trib public editor Timothy McNulty in our Beard-Off yesterday (round two coming up?), but he's sure on our minds today. He's taking the controversial position that "journalists should recognize their weak spots and moments of unintentional bias when dealing with religion and morality." A mere one paragraph later, he commits the exact mistake he's warning others not to make. He says the Trib headline about Subhash Chander should not have......

Reader krs1 rang in '08 at Trinity United Church of Christ with a mass that puts just about every religious service we've ever been to to shame. TUCC, one of the largest black congregations on the South Side and home church for Barack Obama, holds an annual Watch Night service. (Watch Night masses date back to the 1700s, but now they're a tradition at black churches, said to stem from December 31, 1862, when......

The Holiday season is in full swing in NYC, with holiday lights in Brooklyn, a giant snow globe in Bryan Park and Chanukah specials for ham. One citizen decided to go vigilante on annoying car alarms, a murder suspect used a fake Asian accent on the stand and a video of a man being beaten up by teenage girls on a subway shocked the city. And we interviewed soon-to-be-leaving-Gawker editor Choire Sicha, who said,......

We're torn--do we love the quirky lyrics more, or do we love the jiggly '70s-style animation more? Either way, we want more latkes.......

Today is the first day/second night of Hanukkah, the festival of lights (or as we like to call it, Jewish Christmas). In addition to lighting the menorah/hanukkiah, playing dreidel and getting presents, Hanukkah is about oil. And while there are all types of oil, our preference is for the hot bubbly kind in the pan. We cooked up two kinds of latkes last night. The first kind we made was from Fine Cooking magazine,......

In an interview in today's Sun-Times the Reverend Donald McGuire, who was convicted of molesting two boys at Loyola Academy in the 1960s and now faces federal charges of traveling overseas with a minor to engage in sexual conduct, said that he's appealing an expulsion decree levied by Chicago Jesuits to the Vatican and that, regardless of Rome's final say, he will "always be a priest." This despite criticism from numerous people, including a nephew......

And the hits just keep on coming for Rod Blagojevich. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops elected a new president today, and it's Chicago's own Cardinal Francis George. But it's not all good news today for George: the Sun-Times got a copy of a letter he sent, in which he says new legislation that allows sex-abuse victims to sue perpetrators even after the criminal statute of limitations has expired, is "about money." Police are......

The Rev. Jeffrey Lee, a moderate in the eyes of religious leaders, was elected as the 12th Bishop of Chicago at the diocese convention in Wheeling on Saturday. Lee was selected over seven other candidates, one of whom is an openly lesbian priest, the Very Rev. Tracey Lind. Theological conservatives are condemning the vote and Lee, saying it doesn’t demonstrate enough restraint in maintaining the traditional view that the scripture condemns homosexuality. And some are......

While some comic books still strive stylistically for the muscled-up, spandex-wearing men and women of comics' heyday, the image of heroes is beginning to change—in lots of ways. Starting today, in a few comic stores around Chicago (like Graham Cracker Comics), you can pick up copies of The 99, a comic book whose characters embody the 99 attributes of Allah. Already pretty popular overseas, The 99 still follows mainstream comics in the sense that the......

Folks sure are feeling God-y today. Both Neil Steinberg and Harold Henderson are both dipping their column toes in the divine waters. "That must be one hell of a galaxy that God's been busy constructing, somewhere far, far away, because He's sure careless when it comes to keeping tabs on his flock 'round these parts. If the Lord were on the ball, earthwise, then 24-year-olds would not kill themselves," Steinberg writes, in reference to Jim......

Angel Llavano is one cranky customer. He didn't like a sermon at his church, St. Thomas the Apostle in Crystal Lake, so he left a voice message for the priest saying, "I attended mass on Sunday and I have seen poor homilies, but yesterday broke all records." When the priest played that recording as part of the following week's sermon (snap!), Llavano decided to sue for defamation. Great, just when homilies were going multimedia, somebody......

If you were looking for some new books to cuddle up with for the oncoming winter, the Chicago Book Festival is here to help. There's an events booklet available at libraries and bookstores and a PDF online. Much of the information is on readings in the city that happen anyway, but we are excited about the extra discussions for this fall's One Book, One Chicago, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which we haven't read since high......

New York Times reporter Monica Davey took an "unscientific survey" of people at the Cultural Center yesterday, asking them questions from the new citizenship test. People didn't do too well. We decided to do our own "unscientific survey" of Chicagoist staffers and friends, and ... wow. Somewhere, our history teachers are in a corner gently weeping. Highlights of our wrongness: 42. Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the states. What is one power of......