The Catholic Church issued recently a cautionary warning on the first synthetic cell, noting that correctly used, it could be a positive development—but only God can create life.

The Vatican issued the warning after an announcement from the United States that researchers had produced a living cell containing manmade DNA.

The scientist, genome-mapping pioneer J. Craig Venter, said this opens a path for designing organisms that may work differently from how nature intended, according to The Herald, Scotland.

The Church warned scientists of the ethical responsibility of scientific progress and said that the manner in which the innovation is applied in the future will be crucial, according to the Associated Press.  Read more... (442 words, 2 images, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

What makes everyone think artist Leonardo Da Vinci uncovered some big Christian secret?

Writers and religious skeptics have always come up with alternative narratives about Jesus’ life and ministry. But author Dan Brown brought it to center stage in a spectacular way, with his blockbuster 2003 fiction, The Da Vinci Code, followed by the movie and all its sequels and franchises.

Brown provoked speculation in both secular and theological circles—all the way to the Vatican:

Did Leonardo Da Vinci write an encrypted code on his famous Vitruvian Man? Was Mary Magdalene married to Jesus? Is there really a Holy Grail?  Read more... (829 words, 2 images, estimated 3:19 mins reading time)

The recently announced plans by the Vatican to designate a papal envoy to head the Legionaries of Christ renders this powerful, conservative Catholic order directly under Vatican control.

The Vatican made this move after an eight-month inquiry by five Vatican investigators who reported directly back to Pope Benedict XVI about the double life of its late founder, Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the Associated Press reported.

The Vatican report said Maciel had been sexually assaulting minor seminarians and fathered at least three children from two different women—a daughter from what was described as a “stable relationship”, and two sons who are now grown, who admitted to being his children with another woman, according to CNN.  Read more... (538 words, 1 image, estimated 2:09 mins reading time)

The Vatican’s most recent statement concerning the link between pedophilia and homosexuality, which was  designed to quell a fire caused by a previous statement, actually caused a new hullabaloo.

Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi tried to douse flames of controversy by releasing a statement intended to lend the Vatican distance from the uproar.

Lombardi said that Church leaders were not trying to make “general affirmations of a specific psychological nature” and offered Church statistics cited by the Vatican’s internal prosecutor, Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna.  Read more... (425 words, 2 images, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

Irish singer Sinead O’Connor says she’d help Jesus destroy the Vatican if she could.

“If Christ was here, he would be burning down the Vatican. And I for one would be helping him,” she said.

O’Connor made the statement via a letter to the Irish Independent in response to Roman Catholic Bishop, Denis Brennan’s recent plea to his congregation for funds.

Brennan oversees the Ferns Diocese in County Wexford, Ireland.

His  plea for funds came in the midst of a recently exposed decades-old sex abuse scandal that has seen the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland receive a publicized rebuke from Pope Benedict XVI and paying out millions to victims of sexual abuse at the hand of priests.  Read more... (456 words, 2 images, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)