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Pricey Tickets, Cranky Citizens, and Priests Behind Bars as Philadelphia Prepares For Papal Visit

By Anthea Butler

…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…

Rome Has Spoken and Rome Is Finished: The Vatican’s Sexual Abuse Summit ‘Failed Miserably’

By Mary E. Hunt

…ed minors and some covered it up. What’s so mysterious about that? A large number of minors have been sexually abused by a large number of clerics. Period. Full stop. It’s simply the beginning of a hideous story that includes the abuse of seminarians, nuns and other women, children of priests, and more, all of whom merit summits of their own. Francis’ discussion of power fell flat. He claimed that the sexual abuse of minors is an abuse of power. H…

How Belief in Moscow as ‘The New Rome’ Explains Kirill’s Astonishing Declaration That ‘Russia Has Never Attacked Anyone’

By Katherine Kelaidis

…“Christian Nationalism,” these are both ways of saying America is the new Rome for people whose religious sympathies are not quite as enthusiastic about Late Antique and Medieval Christianity as the Orthodox and Catholics. And this similarity should serve as a warning. Patriarch Kirill believes that borders don’t ultimately matter because Russia has a global mission. Some Americans believe the same. Both want to be Rome, whether they say it or no…

Mile-High Identity Politics: What We Can Learn From the Same-Sex Seating Controversy

By Eboo Patel

…, 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…

The Key to Understanding the Federalist Society Isn’t Originalism — It’s This 800-Year Old Tradition

By Peter Schwartz

…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…

Atheist Nazis? The Pope’s Cheap Atonement

By Susannah Heschel

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…

‘Rome is Gay’

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…cemetery was built. At the Pyramid. It’s one of the most peaceful spots in Rome today, famous in part for the number of famous poets and visual artists who have found their final rest here. Keats is buried here; so is Shelley. Both men are buried next to close male companions of the road who poignantly elected to spend their eternities very far from home, but in the material proximity of their friends’ earthly remains. It is a deeply touching imag…

American Bishops Pushed Rome on Nun Crackdown

By Sarah Posner

…mishandling of the clerical sex-abuse crisis, was reportedly the person in Rome most forcefully supporting Bishop Lori’s proposal. Both Cardinal Law and Archbishop Lori (he was appointed to the prestigious see of Baltimore in March) have long supported women’s religious orders that have distanced themselves from the LCWR. Cardinal Law, 80, staffs his residence in Rome with the Mercy Sisters of Alma (Michigan) and Archbishop Lori, 61, helped set up…

Papal Profanity: The Vatican’s Pagan Museum

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…Rome.” What you see is the visual separation of the Christian monuments of Rome (like Saint Peter’s cathedral) from the pagan monuments of Rome (like the Colosseum). That same deliberate separation of sacred and profane is what gave birth to the “Profane museum” at the Vatican. But presiding over the whole affair, in the very center of the painting, is an enthroned goddess. So clearly, the pagans never went away and the Christians never managed to…

Glenn Beck’s Cheap Grace

By Karyn Carlo

…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…