Religion Dispatches
…obal event. This year I participated in the local event in Fort Wayne, Indiana. What struck me most—and this may be an occupational hazard—was the religious nature of it. The participants themselves recognized the solemn nature of this event. We did not speak to one another unless communicating instructions for safe travel and directions. We tied black arm bands on our left biceps in memory of cyclists who had died in collisions with motorists. We…
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On August 6, President Obama signed into law the Honoring America’s Veterans and Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012 (H.R. 1627, an expansive bill with two primary goals: caring for veterans and their families who were harmed by contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, from 1957 to 1987 and addressing veterans’ health, housing, education, benefits, and burial needs). The bill passed overwhelmingly in both houses of Congress, with the pre…
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…With each twist and turn over the long hot summer in the planning for the papal visit, Philadelphia’s citizens have become restless, and their ire has been focused on Mayor Nutter and the Secret Service. In a hastily put together meeting last week, Donna Crilley Farrell, the executive director of the World Meeting of Families (WMOF) announced that the papal events were going to be ticketed—after having already promoted the Papal visit as “free and…
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…ut the question: dying peacefully and without pain (or at least with well-managed pain), dying in old age, dying at home, drifting off to sleep never to wake, dying at peace with loved ones, and, if medical support is necessary, then dying in hospice care is preferable to dying in an ICU. In contrast, an undesirable death to my students―and probably to you―includes such things as dying too young, dying in such a way that our body is unrecoverable…
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…ecific groups. Women-only, black-only and LGBT-only spaces are a relevant parallel. Such spaces take into account the issues related to certain social identities (the personal) and advocate for a reshaping of the public square to accommodate it (the political). This requires some sacrifice of others. At the very least it means restricting their freedom by not allowing them to enter a certain facility while it is being used by a particular identity…
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…e priest had violated their policy. In a little note, a vicar promised Barbara Johnson and her family that he would celebrate a Mass in memory of her mother. They deserve sympathy for their loss, a full-blown apology from the institutional Church, and time to deal with their grief in peace. Instead, Ms. Johnson has courageously endured media attention to bring to light some rapid change in Catholicism. The change is a shift in authority. It is evi…
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…gal conservatism in the United States. After flying for decades under the radar, the Federalist Society’s role in the selection of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to fill Supreme Court openings during the presidency of Donald Trump elevated its profile, putting it squarely on the media’s map. What’s less well known—by pretty much everyone who isn’t part of the legal conservative movement—is that the Society is also hip-deep in…
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…h of these places is someone’s neighborhood. This time, it is only an hour away for me. Picketing as “The Workingman’s Means of Communication” On March 2, 2011, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in response to a series of prior decisions around Westboro Baptist Church’s picketing of a Marine’s funeral. The case was Snyder v. Phelps. In its majority decision, the Court ruled that such picketing is “speech” and thus protected constitutionally. We…
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…accept Christian responsibility for the Holocaust, blaming it instead on pagans and atheists. Given that Cardinal Walter Kasper, on the eve of the Pope’s visit, called Britain a third-world country full of atheists, one wonders if the Vatican is displacing Nazism or anticipating a new outbreak in the country that gave the world political liberalism. Each pope since Nostra Aetate, passed by the Second Vatican Council, has piously reiterated that c…
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…sexuals to repent or be punished by God before the microphone was snatched away one of Kato’s supporters. It might have seemed that the last person the activist’s friends would turn to for support at the moment would be another religious leader. Especially given that the church in Uganda was at the head of the drive for the draconian anti-homosexuality bill still pending in Parliament. But 79-year-old Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, in his purple cas…
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