Religion Dispatches
…Last month, Patrick Rodgers of Philadelphia “foreclosed” on a local Wells Fargo branch. In an act of legal jiujitsu, Rodgers was able to prove that Wells Fargo exhibited a pattern of failing to communicate with its clients and was awarded $1000. When the bank didn’t pay, he arranged for a sheriff’s levy to sell the bank’s assets at auction. A deputy sheriff arrived at the bank branch and prepared an inventory of its assets: computers, fax machine…
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…to continue to shrink into the insularity and disorganization that caused the Philadelphia Archdiocese to decline so precipitously? It remains to be seen. Meanwhile, faithful Catholics and others who want to see the Pope may be losing heart. 10,000 tickets for the Pope’s Speech at Independence Mall sold out in two minutes on Tuesday, with 394k people trying their best to get a few. Tickets are already being scalped at $100 and up on craigslist. I…
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…, not the fourth century … You’re not free to practice your religion in my airline seat.’ ‘This is male entitlement .. the height of male arrogance.’ One comment referred to this as a ‘back of the bus’ issue; as in, women being asked to move in such circumstances was tantamount to assigning them a lesser status as citizens and lower dignity as human beings. Other readers proposed that airlines set aside special seating for men requiring such accom…
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…notions of “human dignity” and “human flourishing,” Catholic natural law—an 800-year-old tradition dating back to Thomas Aquinas—is a lens that offers utter clarity to conservative Catholic jurists, activists, policymakers, and scholars as they observe, describe, and engage the world. The power and sharpness of this lens allow them to confidently snap every human movement—every human desire and motive and act—into its divinely appointed and proper…
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…funded by Priests for Life. The church bulletin at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Fargo contains an ad for Rachel’s Vineyard aimed at those who have “suffered from the physical, emotional, and spiritual effects of a past abortion.” Sometimes repentence for past “sins” is tied to joining the picket line in hopes of preventing other women from having abortions. Karen Santorum, Rick Santorum’s wife, may well be on a related version of that trajectory, repen…
Read More…the real reason for the Christmas season.” While no one tracks the actual number of baby Jesus thefts every Christmas season, in 2013 nativity robbery and vandalism was reported from California to Minnesota to New Jersey to New York, where the theft was investigated as a possible hate crime. One Boston crèche has been robbed three times in nine years, according to the Boston Globe. A New York security company garnered a bit of publicity by offeri…
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Adam Clayton Powell called it “cheap grace,” but we might call it “cheap atonement”: the effort by sinners to select which sins to acknowledge and repent. Pope Benedict XVI ended his heavily protested visit to England with a heartfelt apology for German bombings of England during the Battle of Britain; though he refused to accept Christian responsibility for the Holocaust, blaming it instead on pagans and atheists. Given that Cardinal Walter Kasp…
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…way from the hard work of repentance, who tickle our ears with promises of cheap grace, and offer a vision of the cross of Jesus that has nothing to say to the crosses, and lynching trees, of history. But, if we do, we will be settling for the gospel of Caesar, not the good news of Jesus Christ. Perhaps it is time to put down the chalk, stop drawing pyrotechnical conspiracy theories that play into our worst fears and listen, instead, for the diffi…
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…We have an unprecedented access to cheap goods, yet we must recognize that cheap goods are cheaply made. I am not speaking of quality, I am speaking of cheap labor. We must recognize that through the act of shopping, whether it is for an article of clothing, a toy, a pint of strawberries, or even our morning cup of coffee, we participate in a global economy that values profit over people. Disposable goods are made by disposable people, faceless in…
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…e success either. The opening weekend saw sales of more than $6 million in tickets. That’s the kind of number that will inspire others to try and figure out the formula for the faith-and-family blockbuster. Yet, with the cost of the film reportedly exceeding $30 million, it’s an open question whether or not the Left Behind reboot will get a second installment. The marketing problem of evangelical movies is still, stubbornly, a problem. The general…
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