Thursday's News & Ideas - 12/9/2021

Bruxy Cavey, pastor of one of Canada’s largest churches, accused of sexual misconduct
Religion News Service: Cavey, who grew The Meeting House into a megachurch with some 5,000 people attending 19 campuses in the larger Toronto metropolitan area, was accused of sexual misconduct and placed on leave.

Supreme Court signals further erosion of separation of church and state in schools
NPR: The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority seemed poised Wednesday to hand school-choice advocates a major victory, and potentially a large expansion of state programs required to fund religious education.

Transgender people can’t be baptized unless they’ve ‘repented,’ Catholic diocese says*
The Washington Post: A Catholic diocese in Michigan has instructed its pastors to deny baptism, confirmation and other sacraments to transgender and nonbinary people unless they have “repented” — possibly the first diocese in the United States to issue such a sweeping policy.

Andy Warhol’s religious journey*
The New Yorker: When the artist was shot point-blank at the Factory, in 1968, it was a turning point in his life.

Barred from priesthood, some Catholic women find other roles
Associated Press: Women aspiring to leadership in the Catholic church have long come to terms with the glass ceiling that exists in the male-dominated institution, but Pope Francis’ spate of female appointments in the Vatican hierarchy suggests that change, however modest, is underway.

The Spark

‘Improvise it, man.’ How to make magic like the Beatles.
More than a half-century after the Beatles’ breakup in 1970, the director Peter Jackson has stitched pieces of dozens of hours of previously unseen footage* into a profound, multidimensional creative statement of its own, The New York Times says.

*access is limited for nonsubscribers