Search for "cheap airline tickets with open return phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Pope’s Liberal Defenders are Missing the Point

By Jorge A. Aquino

…ue of globalized, neoliberal capitalism, and for the apparent humility and openness of spirit Francis has brought to that critique. At the same time, many on the left have tacitly exonerated the pope for consistently failing to train the same prophetic energy on Catholic exclusions based on gender and non-heteronormative sexualities. Queer and feminist Catholics, as well as those familiar with latter-day debates among liberation theologians in Lat…

Catholic News We Missed Last Week While Stalking the Pope

By Mary E. Hunt

…isit was the death of John J. McNeill. John was a former Jesuit priest, an openly gay man, a scholar, teacher, therapist, and prophetic leader who died on September 22, 2015, at the age of ninety, during the visit of the first Jesuit pope to Washington, D.C. In a perfect (ok, even a decent) world, Pope Francis would have announced John’s death the next morning. He would have hailed his brother Jesuit as the pioneer honest gay man that he was, laud…

Catholic Bishops Meeting For Family Synod; South Africa’s Dutch Reformed Church OKs Gay Weddings, Ordination; Court in Malaysia Deals Setback To Transgender Advocates; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…hurch doctrine, you are going to be disappointed,” he said. Indeed, at his opening remarks last Sunday, Francis called for a more welcoming, compassionate and merciful church, but also affirmed the Church’s teaching on marriage, devoting a third of his homily to procreative love between man and woman. At a press briefing on Thursday, Accra Archbishop Charles Palmer-Buckley said the world should be more patient with African countries on the topic o…

First U.S. Visit of the Virgin Mary Confirmed in Wisconsin

By Lewis Wallace

…udied, and at least 12 were formally approved as of 2008—according to most numbers (although even a simple count of “official” sites is hard to obtain), Our Lady of Good Help is the 13th. Pope Benedict XVI recently called for more moderation in approving such sites, but any new regulations did not fall into place in time to stop Bishop Ricken from pushing Adele Brise into the international spotlight. Benedict probably doesn’t have to worry about A…

Indonesian Court Rejects Religious Conservatives’ Bid To Criminalize Gay Sex; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…s’ alliance with U.S. groups to oppose LGBT rights Sian Norris reports for Open Democracy’s 50.50 on Romania’s “backlash against LGBT rights,” which is led by “conservative and religious forces determined to protect ‘traditional family’ values,” with support from Christian conservatives in the U.S.: Accept and the wider LGBT community face a powerful enemy in domestic conservative groups such as the Coalition for Family, the Orthodox Church, and e…

And What of the Non-Jewish Jews?

By Shaul Magid

…ancestry generations ago, a Jewish spouse, Jewish friends etc. In terms of numbers, Jews by religion or no religion make up 2.2% of the U.S. population, but if you add “People with a Jewish affinity” it rises to 2.7%, so that this category of people who are not considered Jews by the Jewish community but identify as Jews is nearly 25% of the Jews by religion or no religion, those we conventionally call “Jews.” The fact that there are so many Ameri…

Are You There God? It’s Us, Googling

By Michael Schulson

…ion in “Google searches for churches,” yet more evidence of the increasing number of “nones,” or that “searches related to the Bible, God, Jesus Christ, church and prayer are all highly concentrated in the Bible Belt. They rise on Sunday everywhere.” Other patterns are more jarring: “Relative to the rest of the country, for every search I looked at, retirement communities search more about hell,” he writes. Each month, on average, 422 people in th…

Can the Catholic Church Survive Trump?

By Patricia Miller

…atholic bishops who signed on for the Reagan deal—agreement on abortion in return for prudential disagreement on economics—were faced in 2016 with the Trump echo: implicit support for a candidate who didn’t just hold positions that Pope Francis had called inconsistent with fundamental teachings of Christianity, but for a candidate who based his entire candidacy and his entire electoral appeal precisely on those “un-Christian” positions. And Byrnes…

A Debate Rages in India Over Conversion, Secularism, and “Spiritual Violence”

By Murali Balaji

…disappearing tradition is stoked primarily by demographics. Indian census numbers show that the percentage of those identifying as Hindus dipped below 80 percent for the first time. But while there is much talk about a rising Muslim population, the actual spikes have come among Christians, where the mass conversion of tribal groups and Dalits has been part of a sustained and systematic effort of “Great Commission” movements such as the Joshua Pro…

False Saviors: Trump, Cruz, and the Gospel of the Quick Fix

By Marcia Pally

…nted for 60% of employment in 1979 accounted for only 46% by 2012; and the number of persons not in the labor force is growing. While some are getting richer, the numbers tell us, middle income earners are hobbled by shrinking purchasing power, disappearing job opportunities, and increasingly out-of-reach education. This is problem enough for the many who work hard and can’t figure out why they’re “losing ground,” as Pew wrote. Add to that fears o…