Religion Dispatches
…entage of the cases worldwide, in part because Scicluna states that between 1975 and 1985, “I do not believe that any cases of pedophilia committed by priests were brought to the attention of our Congregation.” What he’s saying here is that they never saw the extent of these cases because they were handled on the diocesan level—much like the case of Father Hullermann, that Benedict (then still a Cardinal) is accused of mishandling. Ponder that. In…
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…te. “We knew it would be a slow, painful death,” Nancy Niedzielski said. In 1997, Oregon voters approved the Death with Dignity Act, which allows terminally ill people to ask their doctors for a prescription for lethal drugs. When his pain intensified, Randy Niedzielski said he wanted to move to Oregon, where he could end his own life, he told his wife, in a controlled, calm manner. Doctors told him it was unlikely he would be able to establish re…
Read More…er inappropriately compares children raised by two heterosexual parents for 18 years with children who experience family transitions — like foster care — or who live with single or divorced parents, or in blended families.” Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin gets right to the point about the study’s fatal flaw: “The study compares the children of married biological parents with those from broken homes — and the study’s “lesbian mothers” that our o…
Read More…anasia), vocations and ongoing formation (shoring up the rapidly declining number of priests and nuns) and, of course, religious freedom (Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who arranged Kim Davis’ meeting with Pope Francis, received two standing ovations from the bishops.). Then the debate turned to the USCCB’s quadrennial “Faithful Citizenship” voting guide. The bishops had voted earlier to revise the 2007 edition prepared for the 2008 election, whic…
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…ge how they understand their own identity. If academic achievement and the number or type of initials after your name is the most important thing in the world to you, then it will change how you view your own masculinity and femininity. Similarly, if having children matters most to you, then you can only be truly “manly” or “feminine” if you have kids. Is there anything you had to leave out? Historians always want to include every interesting anec…
Read More…are pretty talented at rehabbing old things. When I lived in Atlanta in the 1990s, it seemed that gays and lesbians were singlehandedly responsible for taking old houses in abandoned neighborhoods and turning them into revitalized homes and neighborhoods. The turnaround was so astounding that one year, the best sign at Atlanta’s gay pride read: “We can rehab marriage and sell it back to you at twice the price.” Seems that sign was a bit prescient….
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…oked. There are ghosts and graves in the yards of my neighborhood, and the number of skeletons—reclining on lawn chairs, sprouting up from the ground, beckoning from the shadows—has transformed the suburban landscape into a set for a George Romero film. In addition, and beyond bland suburbia, monsters, ghosts, skeletons, vampires, and other playful dead inhabit stores and sell products, entertain across the television dial, and instill a dreadfull…
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…amani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute, named after his wife who had died in 1973. The Institute, which functioned as the center for teacher training, greatly augmented the number of yoga teachers who received official training in Iyengar Yoga and became the headquarters from which to disseminate the Iyengar system. Today, there are thousands of Iyengar Yoga teachers and millions of practitioners in over seventy countries across the world. Some yo…
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…aw. Religious exemptions from abortion bans offer relief to only a limited number of individuals and can never be a comprehensive legal solution to the country’s reproductive health crisis. Nor should the right to control one’s body depend on proof of one’s religious commitments; reproductive freedom is a right that depends on one’s humanity, not one’s religious beliefs. That said, attacking the status quo incrementally proved to be a winning stra…
Read More…d and third most Mormon states, Idaho and Wyoming, where he lost to Cruz by 18 and 59 points, respectively. To add insult to injury, a recent poll conducted by the LDS Church-owned Deseret News found Utah would vote for a Democratic candidate in November over Trump. Utah hasn’t sided with the Democrats since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide election in 1964. Why have Mormons rejected Trump? As Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins explained over the weekend, while M…
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