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Satanic Temple Considers Legal Action Against School Censorship

By Joseph Laycock

…em that this was a form of religious discrimination. The school districts, Southwest Dubois County Schools in Indiana and Federal Hocking Local Schools in Ohio, explained that they had never blocked TST’s website and that the task of determining which web content students can access is outsourced to a company called Lightspeed Systems, headquartered in Austin, Texas. Someone at Lightspeed Systems had manually tagged TST’s website as “mature,” mean…

The New “Values Voters” Mantra

By Sarah Posner

…campaign against Perriello, a Democrat representing a swath of central and southwest Virginia who was once considered a poster child for the Democrats’ faith outreach. After helping to launch Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Faithful America, Perriello beat Republican incumbent Virgil Goode in 2008, but is now virtually tied in the polls with his Republican challenger Robert Hurt. The ad, which FRC considers “one of the most humorous”…

Does the Inquisition Explain the Modern World?

By Gordon Haber

…uisition, was a response to Catharism, a dualist heresy that flourished in southwest France at the turn of the 13th century. A bloody twenty-year crusade stamped out the overt practice of Catharism, though underground its embers continued to smolder. Thus in 1231, Pope Gregory IX created the role of inquisitor, a “detective, prosecutor, and judge rolled into one,” as Murphy puts it. Usually a Dominican friar, the inquisitor moved fast, traveling w…

Dark Sisters Opera Aims to Humanize Sister Wives

By Joanna Brooks

…a focuses on the spiritual travails of a polygamous family in the American Southwest after their household has been raided by law enforcement. I spoke with Mr. Muhly last week to explore the production’s spiritual side. Joanna Brooks: Tell me about the genesis of the project. Nico Muhly: It began very abstractly. Basically, an opera commission comes up and it’s a big open question: what kind of stories make sense? I knew we would have space limita…

Colonialism and the Crisis Inside the Crisis of Catholic Sexual Abuse

By Kathleen Holscher

…ing and often overlooked history of clerical sexual abuse here in the U.S. Southwest. New Mexico was arguably the epicenter of 20th century priestly sexual violence; several of the clergy named in the grand jury report made their way eventually from Pennsylvania to New Mexico. They came because, for much of the century, bishops from across the nation disposed of their worst offenders by sending them for “treatment” here. The priests came to the Vi…

Religious Exceptions Not So Exceptional According to New Study

By Patricia Miller

…most Catholic health care institutions have accepted the accommodation, a number of the nation’s 260 Catholic institutions of higher learning as well as Catholic nonprofits are seeking a broader exemption that would in effect bar their insurers from providing contraceptive coverage as specified under the accommodation designed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a consolidated case challenging th…

Milquetoast Liberal Religion Won’t Challenge Conservative Values: A History Lesson

By Sheila D. Collins

…arge part of the Great Plains, restored wildlife and built a system of over 800 state and county parks. They electrified an entire region of the country, bringing what had been America’s “Third World” up to 20th century standards. They created works of art, gave concerts, set up theaters throughout the country, ran nursery schools, served over 1.2 billion school lunches to needy children, gave immunizations, taught illiterate adults to read and wr…

Vatican Reverses Anti-Liberation Policies in Mexico

By Ruth Chojnacki and Jennifer Scheper Hughes

…ate, an ancient institution revived by Vatican II. In 2000, 341 of Mexico’s 800 deacons served the Diocese of San Cristobal, the largest number of deacons in any Catholic diocese in the world. Vatican suspicion of Bishop Ruiz’s liberationist pastoral strategy resulted in a failed attempt to remove him in 1993. The deacon program came under particular scrutiny after the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, with reports that Maya catechists defied th…

Heterosexual Martyrs and Gay Saints: Did AIDS Coverage Clear the Way for LGBT Equality?

By Diane Winston

…fied as AIDS, did not receive ongoing or thorough coverage. By 1982, nearly 800 AIDS cases had been diagnosed. According to one study, infants and children were increasingly infected. Although a threat to the general population was quickly dismissed, the implication was clear: anyone could be infected. The epidemic had exposed social and cultural fault lines that made coverage more than just a medical story. Its initial outbreak in the homosexual…

Clergy May Soon Find Taxes Soaring As Result of an Under-the-Radar Ruling

By Patrick Hornbeck

…and nuns, Christian and otherwise, live in monasteries and convents; and a number of historic Protestant churches, especially those best endowed financially, provide parsonages. But over time, an increasing number of clergy have made their own living arrangements. Churches found parsonages prohibitively expensive; congregants preferred to see their donations go toward services rather than clergy housing; and new religious ventures, especially the…