A federal appeals court has tossed a lawsuit by Salem-based Satanists over the way the Boston City Council has local clergy members start its weekly meetings with an invocation - and over the way the city fought the group's efforts to make then Councilor Michelle Wu show up for a deposition way up on the North Shore on the day of the election in which she was running for mayor. Read more.
Rendering by Shepley Bulfinch.
Boston College has filed plans with the Boston Planning Department to build a three-story, roughly 45,000-square-foot building to store collections of religious stuff "as well as limited artwork and cultural artifacts" on a hillside between its Theology and Ministry Library and its St. John's Seminary property off Lake Street in Brighton. Read more.
A Boston board that oversees a federally mandated limit on the total number of parking spaces in Boston Proper voted last month to forbid any more parking at a lot between Hudson and Harvard streets in Chinatown, arguing the 30-space lot violates the parking cap. Read more.
A disgusted citizen filed a 311 complaint about BTD's callous disregard for Beacon Hill residents by refusing to send in a squadron of ticket writers to ding people parking illegally on Brimmer Street to attend Sunday services at an unspecified church on Mt. Vernon Street (Church of the Advent?): Read more.
Rabbi Shlomo Noginski yesterday sued Khaled Awad, whom authorities say stabbed Noginski eight times as Noginski successfully managed to get the man away from children at a summer program at Shaloh House on Chestnut Hill Avenue in Brighton Center on July 1, 2021. Read more.
Some residents living near a church-owned "reading room" in Readville that once served as a BPL branch have gone to court to counter the church's own court court effort to win approval to replace the building with a six-unit apartment building even as the Hyde Park Historical Society is offering to buy the building to keep it a public site. Read more.
The Courthouse News Service reports on a hearing today before the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston on the City Council's decades-long policy of having a local member of the clergy open its weekly meetings with an invocation.
The hearing came on the Satanic Temple's appeal of a district court judge's ruling allowing the council to continue not inviting the group to give an invocation.
Inside the old library in the 1930s, by W. Jordan, from the BPL's Boston Pictorial Archive.
A Readville church is asking a judge to let it ignore a restriction in the 1897 deed that limits the use of a side building to "a free and public reading room and library" so that it can put up a six-unit apartment building in its place. Read more.
The Boston Fire Department reports firefighters responded to the Boylston Church at 207 Amory St. in Jamaica Plain for a basement fire around 3 p.m. Read more.
Christianity Today reports on divisions inside Park Street Church:
A years-long fight over leadership styles and decision-making processes at historic Park Street Church in Boston has boiled over into accusations of abusing spiritual authority and authoritarianism.
Our Lady Help of Christians Parish on Washington Street in Nonantum had been providing emergency shelter for up to 30 migrant families since November, but only went public with the news yesterday, after rumors began spreading about violence at its campus - rumors the parish says are completely wrong. Read more.
Eileen Murphy had to do a double take today when she saw what you can buy at the East Broadway Walgreens these days:
Can't say I ever expected to see "Catholicism for Dummies" at the Southie Walgreens.
Boston Police report arresting an Attleboro man they say climbed up on a cross outside the Cathedral of the Holy Cross yesterday evening, then began to "swing and hang from it," snapping off both of the Jesus statue's arms in the process. Read more.
Brookline.news reports how local synagogues are reacting to the Aug. 18 bomb hoax called into Temple Beth Zion, where Rabbi Claudia Kreiman moved her congregation outside to continue its service "while the lights of a firetruck flashed behind them."
The Dorchester Reporter reports on one of the potential effects of the proposal to add bus and bike lanes in the center of the road, says a September meeting has been scheduled to try to figure out a solution.
Brookline Police report that Temple Beth Zion received a bomb threat Friday evening - the latest in a string of such hoax bomb calls to Jewish congregations across the country. Read more.
The Satanic Temple of Salem said today it plans to appeal a federal judge's decision on Monday to toss its suit against the City Council for not letting one of its practitioners start a council meeting with an invocation. Read more.
A federal judge today dismissed a lawsuit by the Satanic Temple of Salem against the Boston City Council over the way counncilors invites clergy members to start meetings with an invocation, concluding that councilors were recognizing the good work done in the city by the clergy, not because they're pushing a particular religious viewpoint. Read more.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports Orthodox students at the heavily Jewish Waltham university are verklempt at what they consider a punch in the kishkes, a furshlugginer two-page school ad, in the Sunday Times magazine, no less, headlined "Brandeis was founded by Jews. But it's anything but orthodox." The school responded that if only the students would read the whole megillah, they'd see it was just a light-hearted attempt to show the school's roots come from the totality of the Jewish mishpocha.
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