Religion Dispatches
A couple of weeks ago The New York Times reported that the Pope has reservations about interfaith dialogue. There are few different ways to understand this pronouncement. Pope Benedict, as both Pope and Cardinal Ratzinger, has never seemed inclined to interfaith dialogue, or interfaith understanding. My own superficial reading of his work indicates a reluctant support of Vatican II. On one level, the Pope is forced into participating in interfait…
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…Century’s articles in the light of later developments, it seems that these reservations about creating a Jewish state were the opinions of a small elite. As Truman biographer David McCullough has noted, Truman’s motives in granting Israel diplomatic recognition were both political and religious. Writing of the 1948 elections, McCullough noted that ‘‘beyond the so-called ‘Jewish vote’ there was the country at large, where popular support for a Jewi…
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…ees us as a unique species—not like any other animal. He has, for example, reservations about animal rights. Too much empathy for other creatures, he alleges, can lead to “empathy inflation.” If we want to protect the rights of non-humans, we might as well torture ourselves over whether or not we have the right to kill the harmful bacteria that’s crawling around on (and in) us. The borders of the human might be “variegated and fuzzy,” Lanier says,…
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…of discussion, and to no one’s surprise, the group decided to shelve their reservations about John McCain and endorse him in the fall campaign. “The alternative is so bad,” Phyllis Schlafly declared, “we must support John McCain.” The meeting was called by Mathew Staver, dean of the law school at Liberty University. Those in attendance included Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values in Ohio, Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther Ki…
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…the founders of the evangelical Right to neutralize previous, Bible-based reservations about Catholic pro-life activism. By 1980, Jerry Falwell was off to the races. “The Bible clearly states that life begins at conception,” he declared in his book Listen America! Abortion “is murder according to the Word of God.” Falwell’s major reference for this claim was Psalm 139:13, where the author writes that God “knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Mo…
Read More…als said they “strongly favored” Romney, and about 30% said they had “some reservations”—proportions just about equivalent to those reported for Romney voters overall. In the voting booth, partisanship trumped sectarianism. As we knew it would. But according to the Pew enthusiasm for Romney overall lagged behind the enthusiasm of Obama voters, seventy percent of whom said they “strongly favored” the president. Perhaps Romney’s team is to be credit…
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…e this interview is a beginning not an end of a new moment. These serious reservations notwithstanding, my early read of “A Big Heart Open to God” is hopeful—to be otherwise would not be Catholic. Moral theologian Daniel C. Maguire gets it right when he says here on RD, “Never before has so much fresh air flowed through musty Vatican halls.” Let the dialogue get bigger and the table grow more crowded. Like this story? Your tax-deductible $5 or $…
Read More…ression, blood, and violence beneath the freedom it proclaims. Pawlenty gives us Martin Luther King Jr. but not the church bombings, police dogs, and fire hoses. He gives us a quaint picture of horses and wagons but no images of American Indian removal, Indian wars, and shrinking reservations. He gives us the fall of the Berlin Wall but not McCarthyism. It’s an ad for a book (a book that isn’t selling that well, apparently) and not a history less…
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…an alert and is petitioning ABC to drop the show: Disney-owned ABC has no reservations about creating hate speech against Christians, but you can be sure they would never consider a show called “Good Muslim B-tches” or “Good Jewish B-tches.” With a title like “Good Christian B-tches,” you can imagine what kind of show it will be. Even if they change the title, the content will still mock people of faith. Okay, this is fantastic. I mean, how lovel…
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…Secondly, even though the son is welcomed back, no questions asked, it’s understood that he’s not going to go out and do it again. The message to LGBT people is clear: you’re welcome and forgiven, but going back to that “lifestyle” is forbidden. I hope my reservations are unfounded, because so much is at stake in this move. If time reveals this new organization to be nothing more than a shuffling of the Titanic’s deck chairs then it will only rei…
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