truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

Leading Economic Indicators: The New York Times reported in June that overworked Catholic clergy in the U.S., Canada, and Europe are outsourcing certain ritual prayer requests from their parishioners over to Catholic clergy in India. Priests said such a practice is not new, but that a priest shortage might have caused a bump in numbers. Indian priests said the requests are typically accompanied by US$5-10 (much more than they are offered for domestic prayers).

Oops! Breakaway Mormon polygamist John Daniel Kingston, testifying in May at his child-abuse trial in Salt Lake City (he had been charged with threatening to beat two teenage daughters if they got their ears pierced), strongly asserted his devotion as a parent, despite having to keep up with numerous children from his reported 14 wives. However, when asked to name the 13 children he had with one of the wives, he struggled through nine names before giving up.

Craig Gross, 28, and Mike Foster, 32, run the Christian Internet site "XXXChurch," designed to help the faithful overcome pornography and masturbation, according to a May Wired magazine report. (Recent advice: "Remain calm and tell yourself, 'You don't own me, masturbation!'" Recently, several online "parishioners" commenced a 40-day abstinence, to match the time Satan tempted Jesus in the desert.)

In 1990, News of the Weird reported on a World War II "cargo cult" on Tanna, one of the 83 islands comprising the republic of Vanuatu (located between Papua New Guinea and Fiji). (Such cults are known for regarding as magical the food and supplies that Americans brought to military staging areas on the islands, and they continued to pray for more "cargo" for decades after Americans left.) In May, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald, violence broke out on Tanna when Christian breakaways, calling the cargo business nonsense, fought with supporters of "John Frum," the iconic American whom the cultists worship. About 25 people were hospitalized, according to police dispatched from Vanuatu's capital of Vila.

Don Sneed, a theological researcher and gay activist in Dallas, Tex., released a video in April that he said provides mathematical and scientific proof that God exists (a theory that he proudly says no one has yet refuted). "The God Number" explains Sneed's "Definity - Uninity - Infinity," which he says "substantiates the identification of the specific number that represents God." This first video, he said, was for the layperson, and he is at work on a professional version for mathematicians and scientists.

Several parents walked out of a holiday program by the Glassport (Pa.) Assembly of God when the actors on stage began whipping the Easter bunny and breaking its eggs, which church officials said was an attempt to move past the benign symbols of the holiday and focus on the suffering of Christ. As children in the audience cried at the beatings, actors chanted, "There is no Easter bunny."