The new issue of Vanity Fair features a story called "The Secret Gay Life of the Vatican: Inside a Hidden Netherworld of the Catholic Church." While the full piece is not online, there's an excerpt on the VF website with two really great quotes. Read… 10/31/13 4:00pm 10/31/13 4:00pm

Just as cool merchandise is to blame for the crime of shoplifting, so too are children to blame for the sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of Catholic clergy for decades. At least, if you ask one influential Catholic archbishop. Read… 10/24/13 3:50pm 10/24/13 3:50pm

Here's an increasingly familiar story: a group of business-owning grown ups who believe things about birth control that are scientifically wrong has lost a lawsuit against the federal government. Related: How much time and money are anti-birth control zealots wasting filing lawsuits they keep losing? I'd be pretty… Read… 9/18/13 4:40pm 9/18/13 4:40pm

Catholics who click on to the pope's Twitter feed on Catholic World Youth Day — a week-long event* that starts on July 22 — will gets an "indulgence", which is basically a get out of purgatory free card. The more you get, the faster you get the heck out of that hell-ish hole and straight up to the big dog's ice cream… Read… 7/17/13 11:30pm 7/17/13 11:30pm

In a move that should surprise only those being cryogenically unfrozen after decades in suspended animation, the Catholic Church is officially okay with gay dudes marrying women and leading frustrating, unfulfilling lives of unpleasant sex. Their reasoning? When a penis and vagina — sorry, man and woman — get… Read… 6/19/13 3:15pm 6/19/13 3:15pm

Nobody seems quite certain of how many saints there actually are, but the Catholic Exchange estimates it at about 810, not counting those currently being considered for sainthood or only got halfway there. Read… 6/15/13 1:00pm 6/15/13 1:00pm

There's a ton of amazing talent in David Bowie's music video for "The Next Day": Bowie, for one, but also Gary Oldman and Marion Cotillard, reunited after The Dark Knight Rises. But the video itself is a dismally on-the-nose, been-there-done-that critique of organized religion. NSFWish for breasts and blood. Read on io9 5/12/13 5:18pm 5/12/13 5:18pm

About 80% of nuns in the United States are members of an umbrella organization called Leadership Conference of Women Religious. This organization devotes the bulk of its efforts to helping the poor and less fortunate, probably like Jesus would have wanted. The last pope did not like the Leadership Conference and the… Read… 4/18/13 7:15pm 4/18/13 7:15pm

Earlier this week, we reported on "Alexis," the 10th grader who was asked to withdraw from Paul VI Catholic High School in Fairfax, Virginia for texting a topless photo as "a dare" to two male friends on the lacrosse team she managed. According to Alexis and her mother, the boys who shared her sext with the entire team… Read… 4/12/13 5:00pm 4/12/13 5:00pm

As part of an ongoing campaign to convince everyone to quit being Catholic, an Italian priest used his annual Christmas message to expound on a very Christmasy topic he'd spent many years studying in Priest JuCo — domestic violence. And like most instances when a celibate male Catholic official comments on what women… Read… 12/28/12 1:15pm 12/28/12 1:15pm

Everyone is expressing their excitement over 12/12/12 in different ways, whether it be by throwing 12/12/12 parties, updating their Facebook status or getting married. (I celebrated by hitting snooze 3 times and eating oatmeal.) Even Benedict XVI, the pope himself, is excited. Why else would he use today to send out… Read… 12/12/12 11:05am 12/12/12 11:05am

When the Irish government announced its plans for an investigative probe into the death of Savita Halappanavar—the 31-year-old Galway woman who died painfully and senselessly after being denied an abortion by Catholic hospital administrators—Halappanavar's husband was less than satisfied. The original seven-member… Read… 11/20/12 5:50pm 11/20/12 5:50pm

Nowadays, you can't swing an IUD around without it smacking a pro-life evangelical Christian right in the bloody fetus protest sign. But did you know that all of these eternal Biblical truths religious conservatives trot out in making their argument that life begins at conception are actually at odds with much more… Read… 11/05/12 7:20pm 11/05/12 7:20pm

Every time perpetually apoplectic Catholic League President Bill Donohue does something batshit like send a hilariously impotent comic book villianesque letter to, say, Kraft foods urging them to stop advertising on The Daily Show because Bill Donohue is personally mad about a graphic that appeared in the background of … Read… 6/21/12 10:50am 6/21/12 10:50am

American nuns, fed up with the Vatican's dissent-squelching bullshit, have fired back at the Pope and his cronies, arguing that cracking down on holy ladies who question the teachings of the Church undermines the entire purpose of Catholicism as an evolving, living faith. Okay — those last two details in the headline… Read… 6/19/12 12:55pm 6/19/12 12:55pm

In a time of war, widespread poverty, disease, and suffering, only the Catholic Church has the strength to bravely stand against the real enemy of world peace and justice: kids who were sexually abused. In fact, the Church so strongly believes that it should be difficult for child sex abuse victims to press charges… Read… 6/14/12 10:50am 6/14/12 10:50am

Change has come to the Catholic Church. After centuries of accusing women who disagree with them of witchcraft, they've abandoned their antiquated ways and embraced a more modern way of thinking — accusing women who disagree with them of "radical feminism." And you say the Church isn't progressive! Read… 6/08/12 2:40pm 6/08/12 2:40pm

An American nun who wrote a book about sex that praised female masturbation has been accused of promoting a "radical feminist agenda" by officials of the Catholic Church, an organization that knowingly and willfully protected pedophile priests from prosecution and is the proprietor of a bank that's US officials have… Read… 6/05/12 1:50pm 6/05/12 1:50pm

In a move that's impressive only in its short-sighted idiocy, the Iowa state Senate has appointed a Catholic priest to its Board of Medicine. The priest swears up and down that he'll make recommendations based on what's prudent to state law and not what the Pope tells him to do, but pro-abortion rights folk aren't… Read… 5/21/12 1:20pm 5/21/12 1:20pm

Well, the good news is that a prominent member an order of priests notorious for child abuse hasn't himself abused any children. The bad news is that he broke his vow of chastity by fathering a child with a woman. The Vatican is pissed. Progress? Read… 5/16/12 11:50am 5/16/12 11:50am