Quick Hits

• Ow, Ow, Ow, Ow. Who thought that this was a good idea?
• Future Fuel Prices Skyrocket around Thanksgiving
• Headline: Methodist church stirs controversy with statue. DUH!

When some members of Amor de Dios United Methodist Church in Little Village elected to move a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe into the sanctuary last year, the icon spawned an exodus.

Turned off by the introduction of a Roman Catholic tradition to a Protestant congregation, most of the church's 15 founding parishioners drifted away. To them, venerating the Virgin Mary and reciting the rosary did not belong in a Methodist church.

Pastors of other Hispanic Methodist congregations objected too. They said praying to the Virgin equaled idolatry.

And Roman Catholics in the neighborhood worried that the church might be selling itself as something it was not.