Religion Dispatches
…usual number of patients at his abortion clinic, Aid For Women, in Kansas City, Kansas. But then, this has been an unusual few weeks. Since mid-June, Dr. Yeomans (and the other abortion providers in Kansas) have found themselves scrambling to see as many patients as possible before today; as of July 1, these facilities will not be able to offer abortion services until they show compliance with new regulations handed down only weeks before. “The…
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…was caught after the murder, fleeing halfway across the state, he had the phone number of an Operation Rescue leader on his dashboard—the tip of the iceberg in terms of the broader connections he’d built with anti-abortion extremists. The church, Roeder would later testify, emerged as the only place he could find a shot at Tiller, around the elaborate security measures the doctor had learned to follow at his clinic and home. “Justifiable homicide…
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…valed Boston or New York. The same month Pope Benedict announced the next WMOF, Monsignor Lynn of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia became the first diocesan administrator convicted in the United States of re-assigning pedophile priests. Lynn was recently incarcerated at Curran Freehold Prison, the prison that Pope Francis will visit in Philadelphia—but the priest was moved at the end of July 2015. When there is a possibility of the Pope visiting Ca…
Read MoreVia the Kansas City Star, the Kansas State Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow to answer the question: do our religious freedom laws adequately protect us from the gays? I’m just kidding about that characterization, but after the failure of HB 2453, which would have permitted discrimination by business owners and government employees, conservatives in Kansas are still pressing for a modification of the state’s religious freedo…
Read More…s neck is an accepted and efficient political tactic. Fred Phelps has even more horrible politics. More to the point, he has horrible politics and he is loathed by Kansas. His clan has been terrorizing Topeka for decades. Hanging Westboro around Brownback’s neck isn’t entirely fair, but see the point about bigoted people above. Engle and the rest of the Religious Right deserve to be challenged. Not simply because they have horrible politics, thoug…
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…ost situations, the person moving to the worse seat appeared happy to accommodate. Moreover, the surrounding passengers acted as if that individual had done something noble. Interestingly, several responders noted situations in which they had moved for other passengers, suggesting that Times readers, like the general population of air travelers, are willing to accommodate some people in some circumstances. The obvious question: why is exchanging s…
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…Yorker, the Washington Post and Politico make no mention of natural law. Among scholars, Pomona College professor Amanda Hollis-Brusky has published well-regarded studies of the Federalist Society and of Christian conservative legal organizations. But particularly in her book on the Federalist Society, Hollis-Brusky misses out on a major part of the story. While “originalism” receives significant attention there isn’t a single mention of “natural…
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…ictims of clergy sex abuse in any denomination, received a subpoena from a Kansas City, Missouri, priest being prosecuted for sexually abusing an older male victim SNAP has never met. The subpoena demanded a sweeping range of documents and correspondence concerning thousands of the estimated 100,000-plus people SNAP has counseled over two decades. In December, the group received a second subpoena from the other side of the state, from the Archdioc…
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…to focus only on his capabilities for the ambassadorial position. I came away even more admiring of Rabbi Saperstein as a model of fairness and generosity in his own person. May his tribe increase. *** As to my assessment of Gov. Brownback: It was thought by many that #45 might skip appointing an ambassador at large for religious freedom, especially as Rex Tillerson is apparently trying to cut down on such special portfolios at the Dept. of State…
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…Jewish perspective it doesn’t matter if the SS officer who killed my grandmother attended Catholic mass the next Sunday or mocked Jesus as a wimpy, pathetic Jew. What does matter is that the Church (Protestant as well as Catholic) never excommunicated that SS officer nor forbade chaplains from celebrating mass at concentration camps. Pope Benedict, the first pope with membership in a Nazi organization (the Hitler Youth), desperately wants us to b…
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