Religion Dispatches
…k, indicating that the current conclave of cardinals had failed to elect a new pope. (As of Wednesday morning, a decision has yet to be made.) From a balcony across the square, however, smoke of a different color rose—pink smoke—generated by women priests and ordination activists. Their action, announcing that women deserve to be recognized as Catholic priests—and eventually as cardinals and popes—replicated “pink smoke” demonstrations held in fro…
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…for her. “Well,” Marie said, “people need us, and we are going to model a new ministry in a renewed church.” What she does, in addition to enraging church authorities, is accept invitations from estranged Catholics, individuals and families, to baptize children, consecrate marriages, and accompany the elderly to death. She leads a support group for women healing from clergy sexual abuse. She gives advice to Bishop Patricia Fresen, the central fig…
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…d strength to CFC. But they cannot do it alone. To that end I propose some new Catholic feminist initiatives. Catholics, including President Joe Biden, need to use the word ‘abortion.’ It is primarily a medical procedure, not an ethical or political dilemma. Try to say it along with ‘transplant’ and ‘tracheotomy’ to get used to the fact that, like those medical procedures, it is necessary and helpful in terms of human health, not for everyone, but…
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…In a June 12 letter following announcement of his intention to ordain 100 new deacons, Bishop Arizmendi lamented that 50 years after Vatican II revived the permanent diaconate, “in many parts its importance is still not understood.” For over a decade the Diocese of San Cristóbal has endured “saddening tests and incomprehension” as result. There are many who hope that these new ordinations will help to build a wholly “indigenous church” guided by…
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…of idolatry. If you can end a fetus’ life, Steinfels argues, why not kill “newborns, the severely mentally disabled, the comatose, demented, or dying.” Come, come! If you can make distinctions where there are differences, which is the hallmark of clear thought and sanity, you can judge different issues differently. Thomas Aquinas put it simply: “Human actions are right or wrong according to the circumstances.” If the circumstances are different, y…
Read More…is telling the story of a crime which he claims has already occurred. The New York Times, Vox, MSNBC, and other outlets called the story “false,” “inaccurate,” and “misleading,” but Trump isn’t merely “lying” here (something he has done more than 10,000 times since taking office). Instead he’s creating a new and lurid narrative based on hatred. The language of truth and falsehood is misapplied in this case, since Trump’s statement about “beautifu…
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…Cardinal Mahony and his lawyers are fighting lawsuits. Thomas P. Doyle, a Dominican priest and leading expert on clerical child abuse, has pointed out that the problem is not accidental but systemic. It is deeply engrained in Irish child care culture. Doyle claims that church authorities from the pope to local bishops and religious superiors knew about the abuses and condoned or ignored them. Church leadership, satisfied with denials, apologies a…
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…ven if not a written constitution like Saudi Arabia), legal systems, penal codes, etc. It is therefore misleading to invoke general principles of Shari`a, even if we accept for the sake of argument that they may have applied in the pre-colonial era, as if they are the legal system of nation states today. Apostasy is only a crime in the penal codes of four or five out of the 40 Muslim-majority countries today. Dr. Luttwak claims that “another provi…
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…to pull from tradition, to find one’s place within it, and to turn that in new ways, often breaking things in the process. Teachers and writers on religion can have an understated aim of performing an iconoclastic move toward the students’ own assumptions, their own ideals and images. We call it “critical thinking,” and modern universities are founded on such an ideal. But, translated across the inside-outside divide, critical thinking becomes a s…
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…uld consider as a vocation.” Emily communicated with a cloistered order of Dominican women, but ultimately decided against that form of life. She was working in an intercultural ministerial context, and found that a diversity of “human cultures and means of interaction with one another, even in a purely non-religious way, were incredibly important for developing relationships.” She adds that “for any true injustices that I did see around me that r…
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