Religion Dispatches
…r it. Here is what Schumacher-Matos surmises: In 2009, a task force of the American Psychological Association came out clearly against trying to convert someone’s sexuality because of its harm and ineffectiveness; we are who we are and homosexuality is not something to “treat”. But at the same time, they acknowledged that acting on same-sex attractions is not appealing to all who have them. The task force supported “identity therapy” for some reli…
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…subtle tracing of the biblical lines of influence on a number of important American writers, especially Melville, whose Moby Dick also counts as the single most important work of American fiction by no less a religious and cultural critic than Cornel West. Bragg’s book is an extraordinary compendium of information, less about the creation of the KJV than about its long cultural aftermath. It thus supplements the story of the creation of KJV as tol…
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…They simply require that they be included in the health plan the employer offers and that, as with other services in the plan that carry no co-pay, they too are offered without a co-pay. Catholic hospitals are explicitly exempted from providing abortions and sterilization (abortions are not covered in any event by the new HHS insurance regulations); they need not offer contraceptive services; they are not required to provide condoms or informatio…
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…Depression, when the worst of all hard times brought out the best in many Americans. To the point that, years later, many old-timers could recall those days as both unimaginably horrible and unimaginably wonderful. Re-read Studs Terkel’s Hard Times if you doubt it. ’Buked and scorned for centuries by white oppressors, African Americans built for themselves a rich religious and ethical culture filled with tenderness and respect for personhood. Som…
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…imal sacrifice that once infused the world’s religions have fallen away. In 1987, the Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye in Florida’s Dade County banned animal sacrifice after it began plans to build a church where religious rites including animal sacrifice would take place. Six years later, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the city ban violated the church’s religious freedoms. It was the same year that Congress passed the Religious Freedom Resto…
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…ts have been such unsavory historical events as the mistreatment of Native Americans, slavery, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two, and recurring outbreaks of nativism and anti-Catholicism. Which brings him to the second point: Who is best equipped to remind America of this more complex history? Catholics, who “have a special duty today to be the guardians of the truth about the American spirit and our national identity.”…
Read MoreRamadan means late-night football practices from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. in Dearborn, Michigan. Meanwhile, Whole Foods is defending itself after a Houston blogger posted an internal email that advised local stores not to promote their halal products during Ramadan. A collection of relics from Pope John Paul II, including a capsule of his blood, will tour Mexico this fall. Rev. Roy Bourgeois has been officially dismissed by his religious order, the Mary…
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…e story ignored the freighted history of sexual reorientation practices in American life. The debates over this practice emerged in the early 1970s, a time when ineffective and dangerous psychiatric interventions into homosexuality were standard mental health practice and harmed many gay people. Having homosexuality declassified as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association and other mental health groups was a major victory for GLBT…
Read More…lly by anyone who could be considered an “official” Catholic, like nuns. In 1983 it forced Sister Agnes Mansour to leave the Sisters of Mercy because she defended her role as head of Michigan’s Medicaid program, which paid for abortions for poor women. When 24 nuns signed a statement that was printed in the New York Times in 1984 saying that there was a diversity of Catholic opinion on abortion, the Vatican hounded them until 22 recanted and the o…
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