Religion Dispatches
…can any great success in the music industry, perhaps Domingo will finally bring the Vatican a Grammy and maybe a few dollars as well. (We’ll just forget about that new mortal sin called “excessive wealth” for right now.) If you are rushing to Amazon.com to purchase this musical wonder, don’t be surprised if you can’t find it. While it is on sale today in Italy and Mexico, it won’t go worldwide until January. However, surely in the coming weeks, yo…
Read More
…y meet is a self-proclaimed expert in religion. What should we make of one commenter’s remark on the Aslan video: “Religion scholar. . . isn’t that an oxymoron?” This presumes that expertise in one’s own religion—or one’s own rejection of it—is earned without pursuing degrees. According to this view, academic training only pushes the budding scholar farther away from “real” Christianity, as Green calls it. And as Aslan found out, the scholar’s “o…
Read More
…ce to the poor. The opposite is true. In America, the liberty of religious communities has always been a seedbed of social action and ministry to those in need. The divide between Catholic and other faith communities has often run deep. Only real and present danger could draw them together. The cooperation of Catholics and evangelicals was quite rare when I was a young priest. Their current mutual aid, the ecumenism that seems to so worry La Civil…
Read More…ding the names of family members to be posthumously baptized. If my Jewish community is outraged about posthumous baptism, my LGBT community is equally outraged about the Mormons—the folks who once brought us polygamy and the doctrine that black people are cursed by God—suddenly becoming the defenders of family values at the expense of gay people. It’s still LDS doctrine that homosexuality is a choice, and, of course, the church has bankrolled ant…
Read More…be the new hotspot for Orthodox Jewish singles to meet, according to Jewcy.com. Honoring the separation of church and state, Republican legislators in Florida are sponsoring a measure that would repeal a ban on public dollars going to religious groups and allow teachers to pray with children. Commenting on the Tea Party movement, Jim DeMint gave a quick history lesson, saying, “A lot of our founders believed the American Revolution was won befo…
Read More
…hs, and intercourse “in the rear.” Note that for Peter Damian only men can commit sodomy and that they begin to do so as soon as they masturbate even once. Using this definition, a dispassionate observer of human affairs might conclude that there is a lot of sodomy going around. About two centuries later, Thomas Aquinas offers an expanded list of “unnatural” acts for both sexes—a list that becomes authoritative for much of Christian theology. For…
Read More…nique Department of Secular Studies, and author of, among others, the forthcoming book, Living the Secular Life. Zuckerman told me he found the data “sort of bizarre” and that it “runs counter to all that I know on the topic.” In the upcoming book, Zuckerman notes that while there is a paucity of research on secular parenting, there are longitudinal studies on the future impact of a secular childhood on adult religiosity are out there, and they sh…
Read More… Stephen Colbert barely clings to his persona in criticizing Supreme Court Justice Scalia’s arguments in favor of the cross in the Buono v. Salazar case. Watch the clip: The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c The Word – Symbol-Minded www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore Go here if you have any problem watching the video above….
Read More
…ers have filed a single law suit against the mandate and have accepted the compromise accommodation the administration presented. We ignore the fact that, in response to a demand by the Phoenix Arizona bishop that a local Catholic hospital and then Catholic Health Care West, a large regional system sign an agreement that they would never again perform a specific type of life saving abortion, both refused and both left the Catholic Health System ra…
Read More
…d a promotional website for the film carries the title: twowaysthroughlife.com. Comments on the film (by critics and in the comment sections of major media outlets) typically ape this dualistic proclamation. But as I watch my daughters play, in amiability and animosity alike, I realize The Tree of Life is not merely about parental spouses acting out nature and grace in divergence from their childrens’ lives. The film, and the reality of growing…
Read More