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Pope Francis Dithering About Women, Skittish About Cops

…ts own, that thousands of children and vulnerable adults have suffered because church leaders refuse to give up power. Alas, the hierarchy rejects change, manically swatting it away at every turn while Catholics exit in droves. Even so timid a move as ordaining women deacons—that is, sacramentalizing and acknowledging that the bulk of the church’s ministry is now done by women—is too much for these men. Asked about the work of the commission he se…

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Václav Havel: Democracy as Spiritual Discipline

…ocial marasmus. There is no reason to think that this struggle is a lost cause. The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle. Havel utterly rejected the kind of dishonest and destructive “ends justify the means” politics that seems to dominate so much of our political discourse: …Of course, I don’t know whether directness, truth, and the democratic spirit will succeed. But I do know how not to succeed, which is by choosing…

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Trump and Hindu Nationalism: A Match Made in Bollywood

…ant the state out of the way of private enterprise, they want the state to use public resources to actively promote a form of Hindu yoga. United by anxiety about immigration—and especially Muslims—as well as perceived threats to capitalist and patriarchal forms of domination, Trump and his allies among Hindus in the U.S. and India propagate militant forms of nationalism all while marketing themselves as protectors of social values. Trump and his a…

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How “Gratitude” Underwrites Inequality, Power, and Exclusion

…n. Anytime you have a stratified society in which there is a strong divide between elites and masses or between rich and poor, those who find themselves in a disadvantaged position naturally feel resentment. That resentment can be a powerful tool of democratic social change, but it can also be a tool of oppression—depending on where the emotion is directed. Historically, resentment has been the emotion that elites feared the most—because it inspir…

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Baby We Were Born for War: To Dominionist Christian Groups, No Election is Too Small — and Colorado is Just the Beginning

…the bottom of each voter guide illuminates the institutional relationships between the partner organizations behind it. “This election guide has been approved for use in churches by a constitutional attorney licensed to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. Documentation may be accessed at christianvoterguide.com. Paid for by Truth and Liberty Coalition, 1 Innovation Way, Woodland Park, CO 80863. Billy Epperhart, Registered Service Agent.” Epper…

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Melissa Harris-Perry: LGBT Advocates Need Public Progressive Faith

…be derogatory, she says, they referred to the “Negro rights movement.” The use of “civil rights” was specifically chosen because it did not designate race, but grounded the movement in all-encompassing principles about the rights of citizenship.  Harris-Perry turns one frequent argument—that gays aren’t marginalized like racial minorities because they can choose to hide their sexual orientation—on its ear, saying “the closet can never be a privile…

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Perhaps Islam isn’t the Only Reason Donald Trump Didn’t Recall Muhammad Ali

…poverty is something to be overcome mainly by heroic individuals who don’t use their identity (racial, ethnic, or religious) as an “excuse” for social patterns of inequality and exclusion, but whose individual merits would be revealed through competition, often aided by their belief in Jesus. As a Muslim and an aging, disabled former athlete faced with a society not usually designed with people of different levels of mobility in mind, Muhammad Ali…

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How the Catholic Church Broke the Health Insurance it Advocated For

…nsurance is per se redistributive. You’re taking money from people whose houses don’t burn down to give it to the people whose houses do burn down. There’s more than a little irony in this given how proud the Catholic Church is of its role advocating for universal health insurance coverage since the early twentieth century. The Catholic Church helped educate the country about the need for shared social benefit programs, then helped tear down the v…

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The Vatican is the Magic 8-Ball of “Family Life”

…don’t grasp the beauty of Humanae Vitae, the encyclical that says you can use family planning, you just have to use a really ineffective form of it that leaves you open to unplanned pregnancy: When treating a couple’s openness to life and their knowledge of the Church’s teaching, with particular reference to Humanae Vitae, the responses clearly admit that, in the vast majority of cases, the positive aspects are unknown… [Catholics] struggle to un…

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Lincoln and Obama: A Precarious Parallel

…the country. It did not work. Abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass accused him of betrayal and civil war began anyway. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, Mr. Obama defends Lincoln, saying that the attempted bargains with the South were “never a matter of abandoning conviction for expediency” but a recognition of the “terrible price” to be paid for pursuing “absolute truths.” As Obama connects himself to Lincoln, we wonder what the results of…

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