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Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired

By Rachel Wagner

…tions? For many religious folk, digital technologies are viewed mainly as tools for communication and preservation. In 2002, Pope John Paul II announced at the World Communications Day that: While the Internet can never replace that profound experience of God which only the living, liturgical and sacramental life of the Church can offer, it can certainly provide a unique supplement and support in both preparing for the encounter with Christ in com…

Power Up: Turn Off the Cell Phone

By Daniel Schultz

…desktop computer in his new office, responded “Oh, that will make a nice doorstop.” He’d never learned to type, much less use a PC. His father apparently had given him the advice that if he took a job with typing as one of the duties, he’d always be stuck in that sort of position. Never start in the mailroom, etc. I hated that guy. Anyway, this Bloomberg piece on power players eschewing the use of cell phones strikes me as of a piece with my exec…

“Saints Are Only Human”: Leaving the Church, But Heeding this Pope’s Lessons

By Elizabeth Colmant Estes

…avis. A gay man who refuses to vacate his Roman Catholic pew, Robby’s Facebook post on the topic read: “The Pope went to see Kim Davis to ask for forgiveness for his part in the history of bigotry that formed her messed up beliefs that got her ass thrown in jail.” I get where he is coming from. But to me, the most important thing about the papal visit was not the agenda he upheld, but the stance he held up. At the National Shrine of the Immaculate…

We Went Through Amoris Laetitia Section by Section So You Wouldn’t Have To

By Anthony Adams

…e anticipated Amoris Laetitia. Nobody expected it would actually open the door to same-sex marriage in the Catholic Church, but many hoped it would allow divorced and remarried Catholics to openly receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. In the way Francis weighs his options and considers various points of view before making any decision, he reminds me of The Fiddler on the Roof’s Tevye. Torn between family and tradition, the farmer gives in to hi…

Put Your Money Where Your Mind Is: A For-Profit Meditation Studio Opens in New York

By Michael Schulson

…oast’s first for-profit meditation studio. As a cynic might point out, it looks an awful lot like a privatized temple—a sangha with a profit motive; dharma for dollars. The company does not phrase its mission in quite those terms. “MNDFL exists to enable humans to feel good,” the website explains. In its DNA, the company is one half executive, one half spiritual. Burrows is a film executive-turned-life coach-turned-“spiritual tourist,” while Rinzl…

Can Expelled Teach Us a Thing or Two?

By Arri Eisen

…ewing Ben Stein’s new documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, is stooping to a level I probably shouldn’t. But then I recall my scientist colleagues who have employed similar reasoning to avoid the evolution/creation conversation, and that this avoidance may have indirectly led to the production of such movies in the first place. It turns out that the movie has much to teach us—though certainly not in the way the producers intended. Hosted…

Swift-Boat Veterans of American Jewry Charge Anti-Semitism at Occupy Wall Street

By Jay Michaelson

…horrible that, like a traffic accident or Qaddafi video, you just have to look. No surprise, then, that a Jewish far-right organization named “Emergency Committee for Israel” has produced a cheap YouTube video showing a couple of crazy people at Occupy Wall Street shouting antisemitic slogans. For good measure, they’ve thrown in Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Eliot Spitzer endorsing the sentiments behind the Occupy movement; ergo, the three of th…

Mitt Romney’s Prosperity Gospel

By Peter Laarman

…a time that he was having the better evening because of his way with a microphone and his remarkable capacity to modulate his voice (not to mention outing himself as LDS pastor and bishop). But it was Billy Graham’s endorsement, splashed into our faces via an expensive full-page Sunday New York Times ad, that triggered my flat-out recognition: the 94-year-old daddy of all televangelists is laying his bony patriarchal hands upon a fellow preacher w…

Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

By Patricia Miller

…se in “nones.” A recent Pew Poll, which provides one of the most detailed looks to date at this phenomenon, found that while 20 percent of US adults currently identify as Catholic, nine percent identify as ex-Catholic, with an additional six percent who were raised Catholic (or who had a Catholic parent) identifying as non-practicing “cultural Catholics.” The difference between ex-Catholics and cultural Catholics seems to be how definitively they’…

What a Turn-of-the-Century Anti-Abortion and Contraception Crusader Reveals About GOP Efforts to Ban Abortion Pills by Mail

By Steven K. Green

…on and contraceptives; he even went after writers of medical journals and books that provided gynecological advice. Comstock proudly declared that over the course of his crusade, he secured the conviction of some 2600 people for facilitating access to abortion and contraceptives, as well as for purveying obscene materials. (He even boasted that he was responsible for approximately 15 suicides of people he’d investigated.) Margaret Sanger, the foun…