The religious beliefs and practices of Americans do not fit neatly into conventional categories. A new poll by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that large numbers of Americans engage in multiple religious practices, mixing elements of diverse traditions. Many say they attend worship services of more than one faith or denomination -- even when they are not traveling or going to special events like weddings and funerals. Many also blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs such as reincarnation, astrology and the presence of spiritual energy in physical objects. And sizeable minorities of all major U.S. religious groups say they have experienced supernatural phenomena, such as being in touch with the dead or with ghosts.

Sepher Toldoth Yeshu means "Book of Generations of Jesus," but rather than it being one single story, it is a midrashic literary tradition, made up of two variant medieval manuscripts collected together some time between 300 and 700 A.D.
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The material that is known to have existed in ancient times comes from Christian sources who reference them like Tertullian and Origen from the early 200s, as well as St. Epiphanius and St. Jerome from the late 300s. The Toldoth Yeshu, or "Toledot Jeschu," was first translated into English by Richard Carlile in 1823 and consists of the only known traditions about Jesus to have ever been written in the language of his own people.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, issued a statement saying that the beatification process evaluated the “Christian life” of Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, and not “the historical impact of all his operative decisions.”

Moving Pius toward sainthood “is in no way to be read as a hostile act towards the Jewish people, and it is to be hoped that it will not be considered as an obstacle on the path of dialogue between Judaism and the Catholic Church,” Father Lombardi wrote.
 

   I have always been torn on Pope Pius XII. I don't think that he did nearly as much as he should have done during the war, and I have always been appalled at his baffling silence about the Pavelić regime in Croatia (mainly because it was Catholic priest who perpetrated many of the atrocieties there). He also stood by as 1000 Roman Jews were deported to Auchwitz and some recent documents confirm that he at least knew about Nazi ratlines after the war.
  But by many accounts he also saved a lot of lives by ordering priests to hide Jews in churches and he did (sometimes) condemn the Nazi atrocities.

  What do you guys think?

 

You think United States of America are not backward?

Consider this:

Those ads created a storm when they ran on the London Underground and British buses this year. Similar ads have run in the United States, Canada, Italy, Spain, Australia, Finland and Germany. Source

Select the answer that most closely matches your political beliefs.