The war against the One, True Church continues apace.

AFP: China to ordain Catholic bishop without Vatican approval: official
China's state-controlled Catholic Church will this week ordain a bishop without the approval of the Holy See, a religious affairs official has said, in a move likely to anger the Vatican.

NorthJersey.com: Excommunicated cleric begins N.J. propaganda tour
Parsippany - A former Roman Catholic archbishop from Africa, excommunicated for installing four married clergy as bishops, said Tuesday he will ordain more married clerics in his crusade against celibacy despite the Vatican's opposition.

Philippine Daily Inquirer: Ramos’ latest jabs at Church over population irk bishops
Former President Fidel Ramos’ latest jabs at the Catholic Church over population policy has irked the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines.

Archbishop Oscar Cruz yesterday issued a highly sardonic message outlining what he said were fallacies in Ramos’ keynote address in a population management forum late last week.

Ramos, at that forum, said the government’s weak and lackluster population performance was due to its “unwarranted subservience to the Catholic Church,” which allows only natural family planning methods.

Without naming Ramos, the archbishop of Pangasinan (Lingayen-Dagupan) said “certain politicians again loudly and proudly proclaim their old-time favorite thesis: population is the culprit for the poverty of the people and the misery of the nation.”

“(Politicians) complain that there are too many mouths to feed with too little food to eat,” Cruz said. “There are too many people without work, without education, without health care. There is too much crime in the streets, too much garbage around, too much air pollution. Population is synonymous with disaster.”

“Translation: population is the enemy of the state,” said Cruz in a statement posted on his blog.

And, last but not not least, from the illegal-in-forty-nine-states marriage of Washington's other newspaper and NewSpeak magazine, comes the vapid whinge of a man dim enough to believe his own press clippings.

Fence-Mending Still Needed
by Desmond "Hoodoo" Tutu

How many times after I made an utterance I wished I had not spoken quite so quickly and wanted to bite my tongue out. Too late.

The utterance was frequently a quick sound bite and often off-the-cuff and unrehearsed. I don’t think that particular rubric applies to the Pope’s remarks. They happened in a formal lecture and were I think considered and made with deliberation.

There were times too when I did make prepared and considered statements but on reflection afterwards came to the conclusion that I could have made the same point but perhaps less stridently, in a less up-your-nose kind of way. I forgot on those occasions that you were likely to catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

It seems to me that his Holiness might have made whatever point he sought to make less provocatively and given the heightened tensions already abroad -- what with controversies over cartoons, the wearing of veils, etc. -- all, especially high profile people, require the wisdom of a Solomon not to exacerbate already fraught situations.

It seems too from the Pope’s pointed apology not for the offending quotation but for the reaction it provoked, it does seem as if we will require some fence-mending. I take my hat off to him for venturing as it were into the lion’s den by visiting Turkey.